Winston Churchill observed: “Americans will always do the right thing… right after they have tried everything else”. Hopefully America (and New York state) will do the right thing with respect to energy policy where we have failed abysmally so far.
Instead of an energy policy, America has a carbon prohibition policy that mandates impossible Net Zero carbon goals, but ignores future energy needs. By 2050 America’s electricity demand will double, and world-wide demand will quadruple, but there is no energy unicorn waiting in the wings to save us from the Alice-in-Wonderland delusions of politicians and climate cultists.
The rest of the world isn’t playing our carbon-phobia charade. At the October Kazan conference, the BRICs nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, etc.) openly declared that their “…domestic energy needs and economic wellbeing will take precedence over international climate agreements like the Paris Accords and “net zero’ initiatives.” The BRICs openly ridicule our Net Zero delusion, and will move forward with their own energy policies. Conversely, current U.S. (and New York state) policy will insure we have the most expensive and unreliable energy in the world. The BRICs will eat our economic lunch, while our laws make us dependent on hostile countries (like China) for materials needed to feed our Net Zero delusion. BRICs love this game: China just slapped the US with sanctions against Net Zero critical materials for which they have monopolies.
This article focuses on developing an actual energy policy based on realities that our politicians have chosen to ignore. Responding to Churchill’s observation (above), it is now time for America’s politicians to finally do the right thing.
The NYS Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) prevents us from formulating an effective energy policy because CLCPA constrains our energy choices and imposes impossible Net Zero mandates. Hochul’s refusal to release the CLCPA risk assessment proves CLCPA is nothing more than a corporate welfare gold mine for special interests like Wind, Solar, Battery, and EV manufacturers. This is why we must insist on full repeal of CLCPA – so we can develop an actual energy policy.
Our energy policy must consider trade-offs with respect to multiple criteria for each possible energy resource, and must allow all resources to be used where most beneficial. Political decisions are dangerous because individuals weigh costs and benefits in subjective ways, so the most expedient political solution might also be the most irrational solution. The energy resources we must consider are: Wind and Solar, Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Nuclear. Existing Hydro power remains a resource, but is tapped-out and cannot grow. Other sources exist but their importance is negligible. We will not consider coal here, but the developing world is moving toward coal in a big way: China builds 2 new coal plants per week, and India plans a 60% increase in coal use by 2030. The world’s coal consumption renders our Net Zero mandates meaningless.
The major criteria for evaluating energy resources are: (1) Economic Costs – money, materials, time, human resources, (2) Environmental Costs – land use, pollution, wildlife, CO2, (3) Technical Feasibility, and (4) Security.
Let’s summarize for each energy resource:
— High energy density and transportability make petroleum our most flexible and critical energy resource, particularly for high power applications like heavy transport, agriculture, and mining. The only question is whether petroleum is more or less environmentally damaging than Wind & Solar when considering high material and carbon content of Wind and Solar infrastructure itself. Petroleum reserves are finite and increasingly more expensive to extract, and will not last forever (although we don’t know how long). Increasing demand for petroleum will raise prices, but transitioning away from petroleum for high-power applications will present difficult Engineering and Economic challenges. Petroleum remains critical, and we must conserve it.
— Nuclear is the only feasible technology for producing Net Zero electricity at scale. New innovations will make Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) commonplace in the near future, so they will likely replace fossil fuels as an energy source in existing or recently shuttered power plants (e.g., Dunkirk), which also allows re-use of existing generation and transmission systems. Conversely, conversion to Wind & Solar power will cost state citizens hundreds of billions of dollars for new generation and transmission infrastructure. Eliminating archaic regulatory schemes will reduce licensing costs, while reprocessing of fuel will reduce the waste stream by 75%. France reprocesses fuel, and has been 70% Nuclear powered for many years. Other countries are already pushing SMRs (China, Russia, India), and around 40 companies in the US are now planning to build dedicated Nuclear reactors for private generation off the Grid. Bill Gates recently funded the resurrection of Three Mile Island, and Meta has announced plans to build its own Nuclear plants. Michigan recently re-started one of its Palisades reactors, after stupidly shuttering it last year. Sadly for the state, it is too late to save the Indian Point reactors that Cuomo and Hochul prematurely killed, costing us $Billions.
— Wind & Solar were advertised as cheap, sustainable and clean, which sounded good until we looked under the hood. The infrastructure for Wind & Solar has a short life compared to alternatives, and is very expensive and material-intensive to build. Because Wind & Solar are intermittent sources, they require 100% backup (doubling costs and complexity of the Grid), and are the most expensive power sources considering all costs. Battery backup for NYS Wind and Solar alone would cost $3.6 Trillion every 10 years. Wind & Solar infrastructure cannot be produced without prodigious quantities of fossil fuels, and require 600-1000 times more land area than Nuclear, Petroleum, or Natural Gas plants per MWH produced. Meeting demand with Wind & Solar will require 20-30 times more infrastructure than we currently have in NYS, and will require entirely new (and unaffordable) transmission systems across the state to carry power from the highly disbursed Wind & Solar farms to local distribution systems. Nobody knows how to handle the millions of tons of non-recyclable and often toxic waste regenerated every 10-20 years upon end-of-life replacement. Wind & Solar are not suited for baseload power, but can be useful to supplement power to offset air conditioning loads.
— Natural gas has many uses and produces very low carbon emissions per energy output. It is the best future option for energy intensive industrial processes, as well as for domestic application (heating, cooking). NG scores high on all criteria and is plentiful and inexpensive.
Proposed Energy Policy:
— End all energy subsidies and production credits. Politicians purposely use subsidies to hide the true costs. Good choices require no subsidies.
— Replace all electricity generation (except hydro) with Nuclear as soon as possible by converting to SMR technology when available, and maintain existing Nuclear plants. Conserve Petroleum and NG for their critical long-term uses.
— Force EVs to stand on their own — no more subsidies and no more cost hiding. Nuclear based power will increase the feasibility of EVs, especially for commuters. End the delusion that millions of EVs can be charged using unreliable and expensive Wind & Solar based power. Sticker price of EVs must include battery disposal costs.
— Stop wasting the hundreds of billions spent on climate propaganda and fear mongering (See Biden’s IRA spending priorities). The savings will pay down our $36 trillion debt.
— Stop fooling yourself with Net Zero delusions.
Michael Dee is a Silver Creek resident and Scott Axelson is a Jamestown resident.
