The researchers introduce their paper by writing:

“In the US Corn Belt, a recent doubling in commodity prices has created incentives for landowners to convert grassland to corn and soybean cropping. Here, we use land cover data from the National Agricultural Statistics Service Cropland Data Layer to assess grassland conversion from 2006 to 2011 in the Western Corn Belt (WCB)…”

They go on to write:

“Our analysis identifies areas with elevated rates of grass-to-corn/soy conversion (1.0–5.4% annually). Across the WCB, we found a net decline in grass-dominated land cover totaling nearly 530,000 ha.[hectares]. With respect to agronomic attributes of lands undergoing grassland conversion, corn/soy production is expanding onto marginal lands characterized by high erosion risk and vulnerability to drought. Grassland conversion is also concentrated in close proximity to wetlands, posing a threat to waterfowl breeding in the Prairie Pothole Region. Longer-term land cover trends from North Dakota and Iowa indicate that recent grassland conversion represents a persistent shift in land use rather than short-term variability in crop rotation patterns.”

“The concentration of grassland conversion on lands vulnerable to erosion implies negative impacts on soil quality and a subsequent cascade of negative impacts on, e.g., crop yields, primary productivity, and carbon sequestration. Tillage of adjacent uplands increases sediment inputs to wetlands by several orders of magnitude, limiting the productivity of duck food sources, including aquatic plants and invertebrates, and reducing food water storage.”

In the conclusion, the researchers note:

“Our results show that rates of grassland conversion to corn/soy (1.0–5.4% annually) across a significant portion of the US Western Corn Belt are comparable to deforestation rates in Brazil, Malaysia, and Indonesia, countries in which tropical forests were the principal sources of new agricultural land, globally, during the 1980s and 1990s. Historically, comparable grassland conversion rates have not been seen in the Corn Belt since the 1920s and 1930s, the era of rapid mechanization of US agriculture. Across the WCB, more than 99% of presettlement tallgrass prairie has been converted to other land covers, mostly agricultural, with losses in Iowa approaching 99.9% of an original 12-million ha. of tallgrass prairie. Potential expansion of corn and soybean cultivation into remaining fragments of tallgrass prairie in the WCB presents a critical ecosystem conservation issue.”

This is another example of so-called “green energy” being not so green. As the authors note, ” A number of studies have now shown that a biofuel strategy based on corn ethanol and soy biodiesel may indeed be suboptimal in terms of net energy and carbon balances.”

See also:

Ethanol fuel not as green as you think

Ethanol from Sugarcane, not so green

Death Toll from Biofuels

In an article in The Spectator (a British publication, not the American Spectator), zoologist Clive Hambler notes:

“Wind turbines only last for ‘half as long as previously thought’, according to a new study. But even in their short life spans, those turbines can do a lot of damage. Wind farms are devastating populations of rare birds and bats across the world, driving some to the point of extinction. Most environmentalists just don’t want to know. Because they’re so desperate to believe in renewable energy, they’re in a state of denial. But the evidence suggests that, this century at least, renewables pose a far greater threat to wildlife than climate change.”

“Every year in Spain alone — according to research by the conservation group SEO/Birdlife — between 6 and 18 million birds and bats are killed by wind farms. They kill roughly twice as many bats as birds. This breaks down as approximately 110–330 birds per turbine per year and 200–670 bats per year. And these figures may be conservative if you compare them to statistics published in December 2002 by the California Energy Commission: ‘In a summary of avian impacts at wind turbines by Benner et al (1993) bird deaths per turbine per year were as high as 309 in Germany and 895 in Sweden.’”

This danger to birds and bats is not confined to Europe. An article in the Washington Times by Paul Driessen notes:

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and American Bird Conservancy say wind turbines kill 440,000 bald and golden eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, cranes, egrets, geese and other birds every year in the United States, along with countless insect-eating bats.

“New studies reveal that these appalling estimates are frightfully low and based on misleading or even fraudulent data. The horrific reality is that in the United States alone, “eco-friendly” wind turbines kill an estimated 13 million to 39 million birds and bats every year.”

In the recent “fiscal cliff” negotiations, it seems crony capitalism triumphed over good sense. Lobbying by the wind industry saved its subsidy, the Production Tax Credit, which was set to expire at the end of 2012. The “cliff” deal now extends that subsidy through 2013 thus costing American taxpayers $12 billion, and encouraging use of a very expensive, very unreliable, and to wildlife, a very lethal form of “green” energy production.

See also:

(human) Health Hazards of Wind Turbines

Electricity generated by wind power may raise temperatures and costs

Wind farms raise local and regional temperatures

Thorium, another alternative energy choice

In California:

The California Manufacturers and Technology Association released a new report that suggests costs associated with California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) may be a lot higher than previously estimated.

The new study estimates “that the average California family will pay an additional $2,500 annually by 2020 when AB 32 is fully implemented. In addition, the state is expected to lose an additional 262,000 jobs, 5.6 percent of the gross state product, and a whopping $7.4 billion through decreased annual state and local tax revenues as a result.” See more here.

In Germany:

From Spiegal Online: “Solar subsidies cost German consumers billions of dollars a year and are widely regarded as inefficient. Even environmentalists are concerned that Berlin’s focus on solar comes at the detriment of other renewables. But the solar industry has a powerful lobby, and politicians have proven powerless to resist.”

“Next year, a three-person family will likely have to pay up to an additional €175 ($220) to finance the construction of renewable energy infrastructure.”

“A new study by Georg Erdmann, professor of energy systems at Berlin’s Technical University…[estimates that] subsidies for renewable energy, including an expansion of the power grid, will saddle energy consumers with costs well over €300 billion ($377 billion)” between now and 2030.

“Photovoltaics are threatening to become the costliest mistake in the history of German energy policy. Photovoltaic power plant operators and homeowners with solar panels on their rooftops are expected to pocket around €9 billion ($11.3 billion) this year, yet they contribute barely 4 percent of the country’s power supply, and only erratically at that.” See more of the story here.

As Kermit once said, “It isn’t easy being green.”

]]> http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2012/07/13/the-cost-of-green-energy/feed/ 1 http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2011/11/13/politics-versus-american-energy-security/ http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2011/11/13/politics-versus-american-energy-security/#comments Sun, 13 Nov 2011 16:47:34 +0000 Jonathan DuHamel http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/?p=1053 There seems to be a great disconnect between administration rhetoric and actual administration policy.  Here I will examine two examples, policy on outer continental shelf drilling for oil and gas, and actions on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from Canada.

White House rhetoric:

“We need to deploy American assets, innovation, and technology so that we can safely and responsibly develop more energy here at home and be a leader in the global energy economy.” – White House website.

“[T]he Obama Administration has launched the most aggressive and comprehensive reforms to offshore oil and gas regulation and oversight in U.S. history to ensure that our nation can safely and responsibly expand development of its offshore energy resources.” – White House website

The reality:

Exploring for oil and gas offshore has been an on-again, off-again circus.  The latest round is a de facto moratorium.  On November 8, 2011, the Obama administration announce a draft plan that would close exploration drilling on the outer continental shelf until 2017.

This moratorium places some of the most promising areas off limits and blocks some leases that were in progress.  This policy certainly is “aggressive” but misguided.

The Keystone XL pipeline would bring additional oil from Canada.  Canada currently supplies us with more oil than all the Persian Gulf sources combined, and this pipeline would put an additional large dent in that unstable source.

The pipeline is awaiting administration approval.  President Obama is caught between his environmentalist lobby supporters who want him to ban the pipeline, and the unions because the pipeline would create many new jobs.  President Obama has decided not to decide until after the 2012 election when he will have less need of these opposing forces.

White House rhetoric:

“As we recover from this recession, the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs – but only if we accelerate that transition. Only if we seize the moment.” – President Barack Obama

The reality:

This is a green fantasy that ignores reality.  So-called clean energy or green energy, such as solar and wind generation, is actually a parasite on the economy because neither would exist without government mandates and subsidies.  Expenditures on these programs divert resources that could otherwise be spent on more economical and productive development.

One administration claim is that increased use of solar and wind generation will reduce our dependence on foreign oil imports, but this doesn’t fly because less that 1% of our electricity is produced from petroleum.

The experience in Europe should serve as a warning:

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.

The administration’s EPA is also promulgating unrealistic regulations which will harm our ability to produce energy.  For a story close to home, The San Pedro Valley News-Sun has a story which starts:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing new regulations that, if enacted, could cause the cost of generating electricity to go up substantially in rural areas. In some cases, the cost of implementing the infrastructure to support the regulatory changes is so prohibitive, power generation facilities may be forced to shut down entirely.

Potential regulatory changes involving the sequestering of carbon and how coal ash is used – if enacted – could impact generating stations throughout rural America, including Cochise County, said Geoff Oldfather, the communications, marketing and public relations manager for Arizona Electric Power Cooperative.  (Read the rest of the story here.)

Politics and environmental zealotry are getting in the way of sound energy policy.

UPDATE:

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Sunday that he was looking at exporting more oil to China after the United States delayed a decision on a controversial pipeline.  Read more here.

See also:

Obama Clueless on Energy – Part 1

Obama Clueless on Energy – Part 2

Obama administration still clueless on energy

Blowing in the Wind, a look at green jobs

The myth of green jobs

Clean Coal: Boon or Boondoggle?

EIA says Clean Energy program will increase electricity costs 29%

1) Read the Constitution, too many of you are ignorant of what it says or ignore what it says. Check especially Article I, Section 8.

 2) Read and understand the implications of all bills before you vote on them. Remember who you work for.

 3) Reduce spending and the deficit by sticking to your Constitutional mandate.

 4) Stop subsidizing “green energy.” It is too expensive and uses funds that could be put to more productive use. For instance, for electrical generation, the EIA calculated 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.

 5) Remove restrictions to natural resource development. The U.S. must re-industrialize and use our own natural resources. Currently 80% of GDP is in service industries rather than manufacturing which means we redistribute wealth rather than create it.

 6) Repeal “Obamacare.” It is too complicated and too expensive. Base health care insurance on the HMO concept for Medicare/Medicaid recipients. Allow insurance companies to compete nationally, and remove all plan restrictions on client choice of healthcare providers. All plans should contain a menu of coverage choices, and if people want more than the subsidized coverage, then they pay the extra premium. Allow similar plans for younger people, to be paid by the client. Remember the concept of basic insurance is to pay for unaffordable expenses.

 7) Get real on climate change. There is nothing you can do about it. Mother Nature ignores legislation. No one, not even the IPCC, has demonstrated a significant cause and effect relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature.

 8) Rein in or even eliminate the EPA; it is a den of junk science.

 9) Repeal or greatly modify the Endangered Species Act; it provides no positive incentive for conservation, it tramples on property rights, it destroys industries, it is very expensive, and it is ineffective. (See my analysis herehttp://tinyurl.com/25g29ap )

 10) Restore the “Bush” tax cuts.

 11) Go through every federal agency to eliminate wasteful spending and fraud.

12) Secure our borders from illegal entry and smuggling, and provide a realistic, monitored system for temporary workers.

It is the responsibility of each member of Congress to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Do your duty.

Their claim that 5 million new jobs will be created in the energy sector over the next ten years is just not credible. Consider that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the entire electrical generation industry, from mining, manufacturing equipment, power generation, and transmission, currently employs just under one million people. Where is Obama going to put 5 million more people? Will he have platoons of people peddling bicycles hooked to small generators? And in the State of the Union speech, he pushed for job-killing climate legislation in spite of recent events showing that the data have been fudged. During the speech, Obama was laughed at after referring to the “overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change.” First the audience laughed, then Pelosi and Biden, and finally Obama himself smirked at the insanity of his remark. Maybe his speech writers should read the news.

So called “green” energy is more expensive than fossil-fuel generated electricity, so energy costs would necessarily increase. Our economy is very sensitive to energy costs, so rising costs would more likely result in job losses rather than more employment.

According to a Cato Institute study (Policy Analysis 280), wind generation costs are 6-7¢ per KWh vs. 3¢ for natural gas, 2.2¢ for coal, and 1.7¢ for nuclear. Solar power costs 38¢ to 53¢ per KWh. The Cato report also said that the materials required for thermal-solar projects were 1,000 times greater than for a similarly sized fossil-fuel facility, and therefore would create substantial incremental energy consumption and industrial pollution. A major environmental cost of photovoltaic solar energy is toxic chemical pollution (arsenic, gallium, and cadmium) and energy consumption associated with the large-scale manufacture of photovoltaic panels. The installation phase has distinct environmental consequences, given the large land masses required for solar farms–some 5 to 10 acres per MW of installed capacity.”

 The Administration touts “fast-tracking” solar development in the west, but has limited permits to 670,000 acres of more than 30 million suitable acres available.

Wind-generated electricity, especially, is intermittent and unreliable, so that it requires conventional backup generating capacity. Energy companies will have a hard time monitoring and switching between generation sources to meet demand and prevent blackouts or brownouts.

The Interior Department policy does not help wind-power. The Cape Wind Project in Nantucket was to be the first off-shore venture, but Interior will allow the area to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, thus precluding development.

During the State of the Union speech, Obama gave lip service to off-shore petroleum exploration. During the Bush administration, Congress lifted a moratorium on off-shore exploration, but Obama’s Interior Department has imposed a de facto moratorium while they “study” a leasing program. In 2009, the administration leased less land for energy development than that of any other year on record, according to the American Energy Alliance. And government revenues from leasing in 2009 were just one-tenth that in 2008. Meanwhile China is buying up all the leases it can get, some close to American shores.

The Interior Department has withdrawn most of the offered leases for natural gas in Utah, delayed oil shale research and demonstration projects in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado, and blocked uranium mining in Arizona. Obama proposed development of nuclear energy. But, last year, in a sop to Senator Harry Reid, the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository was closed, so nuclear waste will continue to be stored in barrels near the generating plants rather than safely underground.

Biofuels such as ethanol require heavy government subsidies. According to the Journal of Environmental Monitoring, ethanol subsidies amount to the equivalent of $1.95 per gallon on top of the gasoline retail price. At present, no automobile manufacturer will extend an engine or parts warranty for vehicles that use more than 10 percent of ethanol content in fuel, except for vehicles specifically designed to run on E- 85 fuel. This means that the majority of cars on the road today in the United States are not under warranty for anything other than gasoline containing 10 percent ethanol or less. Currently, ethanol displaces about 2% of gasoline and saves relatively little in petroleum imports. Ethanol is not as energy efficient as gasoline. A 2006 study by Consumer Reports found that an E-85 vehicle delivered 27% less mileage than a similar gasoline-powered vehicle. A study from Stanford University found that ethanol-powered E-85 vehicles significantly increased ozone, a prime ingredient of smog.

While the Obama administration is all starry-eyed over “green” energy, it is unlikely that solar, wind, and biofuels taken together would ever account for more that 2- to 3% of total energy use. For the next few decades, at least, fossils fuels with continue to provide about 85% of energy.

What the government should do is remove restrictions to exploration and development of our domestic resources. For instance, in 2007, the Department of the Interior inventoried 99 million acres of federal land which it estimated to contain 21 billion barrels of oil and 187 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. DOI found that due to restrictive regulations “just 3 percent of onshore Federal oil and 13 percent of onshore Federal gas are accessible under standard lease terms.”

The Department of Energy estimates that the Green River formation in NW Colorado, SE Utah, and SW Wyoming contains 1.8 trillion barrels of oil in shale that could be economically produced. That is more than three times the total reserves of all Mid-East oil fields.

Off-shore resources are also restricted. The Minerals Management Service (of DOI) estimated that there are about 86 billion barrels of undiscovered, recoverable oil and about 420 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, recoverable natural gas in the Federal Outer Continental Shelf of the United States, but 85% of this resource is off limits due to federal and state restrictions.

The U.S. has vast coal supplies which could be turned into gasoline, diesel, and other fuels. Coal reserves in Illinois alone, for instance, have the energy equivalent of all the oil in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait combined. The process was invented by the Germans in 1920 and perfected more recently by Sasol in South Africa. According to Business Week, Sasol “churns out 160,000 barrels of gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel a day, enough to cover 28% of South Africa’s needs, without using a single drop of crude oil, imported or otherwise.” Cost is equivalent to about $30- to $35 per barrel of oil. This source alone could end our dependence on Mid-East oil.

Investors Business Daily (IBD) points out that China is attempting to lock up oil reserves throughout the world, including “in America’s backyard, Argentina, Venezuela, and Canada, and in a country America presumably dominates, Iraq.” At the same time, American oil companies are being discouraged by government, from exploring and exploiting domestic reserves. IBD opines that “What the world is witnessing is the largest peaceful transfer of power in history. Energy means power, and while the U.S. is consumed by environmental ideologies and climate rhetoric, it is committing economic hara-kiri in the process. China, riding on energy acquisitions with little competition, will propel itself into the economic stratosphere.” Obama’s stated goal of reducing our dependence on foreign oil seems to be based on a green fantasy, blinded by ideology.