Real Clear Politics Fueling America's Future By _Carl M. Cannon & Brandon Ott_ (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/authors/carl_m_cannon__brandon_ott/) - May 20, 2013 Energy. The term itself has its roots in a word used by Aristotle, one a modern English speaker might recognize: “enérgeia.” Roughly translated from ancient Greek it means “at work.” And although our modern understanding of energy wasn’t realized until a century ago, courtesy of Albert Einstein, “at work” is an appropriate way to think about energy in the 21st century: without it nothing in our modern world would function. That knowledge has seeped into the consciousness of everyday Americans at an accelerating rate. Once an esoteric topic confined to trading floors, boardrooms, distant oil fields, and university symposiums, energy news now splashes across our morning papers and favorite websites on a daily basis. The Keystone XL Pipeline is a political football in the Midwest, hydraulic fracturing is the latest battleground between environmentalists and energy producers, cars of the future are now cars of the present, voters are plumbed for their opinions on ethanol, off-shore oil drilling, solar and wind power -- and climate change. Why not? A flick of a switch, a check of Facebook, a late-night trip to the kitchen -- everything requires energy. That energy comes from sources around the country and the world at considerable cost, effort and risk. Americans buy much of our oil from friendly Canada and Mexico, but less-simpatico Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria send us nearly as much. Natural gas, after decades of public and private R&D, is finally providing vast quantities of cheaper and cleaner domestic energy, as well as many thousands of well-paying jobs and millions in tax revenue. The importance of coal, long a symbol of American manufacturing and grit, is declining, but it is still responsible for 39 percent of the electrical generation in this country – and is surging in China. Nuclear energy, once the great hope of energy experts and global-warming experts , has been sidelined by sensational disasters—Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima—to the point of stagnation. Meanwhile, solar and wind energy are posting new and better gains each year, although they still are far from being an adequate replacements for fossil fuels. When you add biomass to the mix, the picture that emerges is that renewables are generating about 10 percent of America’s energy needs. Conservation and energy-saving technological advances are part of the energy mosaic, too, albeit with a one-step-forward-and-two-steps-back aspect to them: The more energy Americans save, the more we also use. This week, RealClearPolitics is engaged in a special report on the issues facing the country regarding energy. As part of that focus, RCP is hosting a noon lunch Tuesday at Union Station in Washington, D.C., where a dozen industry and environmental experts will offer a panoramic overview of the future of energy. Black Gold and Texas Tea “Let me tell you a story about a man named Jed Poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed Then one day he was shootin’ at some food Up from the ground came a bubblin’ crude Black gold, Texas tea The next thing you know ol Jed's a millionaire” That kind of oil has long since been burned up in Ford Mustangs and Chevy pickups, and it now comes from all over the world, not just Texas. But the thing is, it’s still coming, and that’s a huge part of the story. Economists, environmentalists, and even some oil exploration geologists predicted that the world’s supply of crude would be nearly gone by now. Instead, the technology and finding and drilling for fossil fuels has opened fields deep underground (and under the sea) that could previously only be imagined. Today the problem isn’t extracting crude oil as much as making sure it flows where it’s supposed to; i.e. into pipes or tankers on its way to refineries instead of , say, into the Gulf of Mexico. No other energy product is as visible as oil. Whether imported from the Middle East or produced here in the U.S., oil floods our energy mind. From New York to Alaska, Texas to North Dakota, jobs and barrels and money are flowing. Production is expanding at an incredible rate; since 2008, it has jumped nearly 50 percent, reaching 7.4 million barrels per day. That’s a 21-year high, and nearly a million more barrels a day than 2012. Studies show that by 2020, the U.S. will be the world’s leading energy producer, even outpacing energy juggernaut Saudi Arabia. A resurgent Gulf will regain its lost glory in the next few years following the BP disaster. Canada is on a pace to produce an additional 1.3 million barrels a day by 2018. “Energy independence,” long the pipe dream of politicians, actually seems attainable. The looming question remains: at what cost to our environment? The Friction Over Fission: What if Americans could, without kicking the fossil fuel habit that makes our cars run, address the problems of air pollution, lower our huge international trade imbalance, reverse the flow of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere – the ones blamed for global warming – and protect threatened coastal ecosystems from the Louisiana bayou to the Arctic wilderness? Well, some people think you can, if only the United States would build more nuclear power plants. In 2008, John McCain vowed to do just that; Barack Obama, despite cultural antipathy for nukes among his liberal base, reluctantly joined in the call. Then came Fukushima. Today, jetsam and flotsam from the Japanese tsunami is starting to float up on West Coast beaches – and nuclear power cannot compete with natural gas on price point. Going Nuclear. Some 436 nuclear energy plants are currently operating in the world, with more than five dozen in some degree of planning and construction. These plants account for only 13.5 percent of the world’s electricity. In the United States, the picture is slightly better: 104 power plants, supplying about 19 percent of the nation’s electrical power (and the lion’s share of emission-free electricity). And though four new domestic nuclear reactors have been licensed in the last five years, the political and economic environment is still daunting. The sobering fact is that no new plant has been built in the U.S. since 1977. Staying Nuclear. In the aftermath of Fukushima, public opposition to nuclear power surged worldwide. Protests like those not seen since the waning days of the Cold War took place from Bremen, Germany to Taipei City. In the United States, that kind of opposition has never gelled, but local energy executives and public officials alike were jittery, especially if they operate near coastlines. In 2012, a minor leak in old steam generation tubes closed the San Onofre nuclear plant outside San Clemente, Calif. Jellyfish closed the Diablo Canyon power facility 240 miles up the Pacific coast. A temporary power failure led to the brief shutdown of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in New Jersey. All this has taken a toll on public support for nuclear power: A Gallup Poll done two months ago shows that only 37 percent of Americans want “more emphasis” on nuclear power, half as many who favor wind and solar, trailing oil, and ahead of only coal. In addition to flagging public opinion, the nuclear power industry faces a number of significant issues. These range from the high cost of constructing new-generation plants to the lack of a comprehensive national plan for storing nuclear waste as evidenced in the Yucca Mountain controversy. Safety concerns remain. And the more systemic problem is the inexorable march of time. In other words, the “fleet” of U.S. plants is aging. Some are on the cusp of becoming obsolete. Making Existing Technologies Safer, Eco-friendly Frack this, buddy! In the early 1980s a former Army captain named George P. Mitchell pioneered a method for extracting natural gas from far below the surface. That method, called hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” has changed the face of the energy business – not to mention the economics of North Dakota and other states. “The development of shale gas . . . has become a ‘game changer’ for the U.S. natural gas market,” proclaims the U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Shale gas reserves [are] now at the highest level since 1971.” Partly because it requires vast amounts of underground water, alarm bells have been raised: Does fracking imperil the underwater aquifers that constitute America’s supply of drinking water? Or is it the long-sought technological answer putting the U.S. on the road to energy independence? Or both? “King Coal” becomes “Clean coal.” Clean coal is a much-used term that encompasses everything from truly closed systems that release no pollution into the atmosphere to slightly retrofitted scrubbers or higher smokestacks. Coal may not be “king” anymore, but no discussion of future energy needs can take place without it: Nearly 40 percent of the electricity in the U.S. is supplied by coal-powered plants. And with plug-in cars (see below) on the horizon, the nation’s electric needs are not going to decline anytime soon. Dam-Nation: Large-scale hydro-electric projects may be a thing of the past, and not necessarily because the high dams constructed in the 20th century flooded valleys, ruined ancient fishing runs, and dried-up sources of irrigation for rural farms. Moreover, environmental and aesthetic concerns have caused Americans to re-think many regional water projects. On Oct. 26, 2011, the 12-story high Condit Dam on the White Salmon River in Washington state was breached by PacifiCorp, a utility that decided it didn ’t want to build fish ladders. Hello salmon and migrating steelhead! But goodbye 14 megawatts of electricity. It’s a tradeoff local residents were willing to make. In other places, however, the hot trend is micro-dams—small water projects that produce power locally, not for the national grid, and which do a minimum of ecological damage. They Call the Wind Mariah. In 2009, the state legislature in Hawaii passed a law requiring electric utilities to produce 40 percent of their power from renewable source by 2030. Obviously, that’s a far-away goal, and one that can be tweaked in subsequent legislative sessions, but the hope is that has precipitated a huge investment in wind power in the islands. Solar: Is there life after Solyndra? Well, there is for the Chinese, which are rapidly moving to dominate the solar energy market. What can U.S. producers do to compete? Do they need government help—and will anyone dare propose offering such help after the scandal that has beleaguered the Obama administration? Part of the answer is in California. Like Hawaii, the state is, in effect, setting an energy policy of its own, as envisioned by the solar plug-in stations being developed for cars. “I’ve seen the future and it works,” Lincoln Steffens once said. He was talking about the Soviet Union, and he was wrong, but one can’t help but wonder what Steffens would have thought about post-Arnold Schwarzenegger California. Hydrogen: The simple element is high in energy and produces almost no pollution. It’s been used by NASA for four decades, but so far nobody has figured how to make cars run on it. That may be about to change. The hydrogen fuel cell battery is the Holy Grail, and labs all over the world are working on it. Last year, the Carbon Trust, based in the U.K., appropriated $3 million to an emerging technologies company for the purpose of researching hydrogen fuel cells. CAFE Standards: In 1975, President Gerald Ford signed into law a measure requiring automakers to double the fuel efficiencies of their fleets by 1985— to 27.5 miles per gallon. The law had loopholes you could drive a truck through, but it worked for a while. Then nothing more was done for 22 years. On Dec. 19, 2007, George W. Bush signed an updated version into law. This one required automakers to increase the average fuel economy of their cars to 35 mpg by 2020. “Today we make a major step toward reducing our dependence on foreign oil, confronting global climate change, expanding the production of renewable fuels, and giving future generations a nation that is stronger and more secure,” the president said. “This is a choice between yesterday and tomorrow,” added House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “It’s groundbreaking.” It was really nothing of the kind. It was a small step that had been taken long after Europe and Japan (and, yes, California) has passed more stringent CAFE standards -- most of it coming before the invention of hybrids. But it was progress, and that’s the essential story of energy. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
