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Rep. Lizzie Fletcher is Out of Step With Her District

October 19, 2020 by Leave a Comment

Last month the American Energy Alliance released its 2020 American Energy Scorecard results for the House of Representatives.  The AEA scorecard scores voting and co-sponsorship decisions on legislation affecting energy and environmental policy, educating voters on how their representatives vote and holding members accountable for those decisions.  

The scorecard is guided by principles such as: 

  • Promoting affordable, abundant, and reliable energy
  • Expanding economic opportunity and prosperity, particularly for working families and those on fixed incomes
  • Giving Americans, not Washington bureaucrats, the power to make their own energy choices
  • Encouraging private sector innovation and entrepreneurship
  • Advancing market-oriented energy and environment policies
  • Reducing the role of government in energy markets
  • Eliminating the subsidies, mandates, and special interest giveaways that lead to higher energy costs

This year’s scorecard compiled 19 votes and 2 co-sponsorship decisions from the 116th Congress.  74 House members achieved a 100% score.

While many members failed to achieve a perfect score for various reasons, the most concerning scores came from those representing districts where the energy industry is a major economic driver and job creator.  One of these members is Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, whose Texas 7th Congressional District covers much of the west side of Houston.  Houston is the energy capital of the United State, with the energy industry supporting tens of thousands of high paying jobs in the city. Fletcher’s district even includes the “energy corridor,” an area of the city where energy firms are especially concentrated.

Given the outsized importance of the energy industry in her district, Rep. Fletcher’s score of 37% is especially disappointing. This is even below the overall House average of 42%.  Rep. Fletcher is clearly out of step with her constituents in the 7th district. This kind of voting record might pass in New York City, but it is unacceptable from the district at the heart of the Texas energy industry.

It also cannot be considered an accident.  AEA notifies all members in advance of votes that will be scored.  A member disagreeing with AEA’s position on one or two votes might be understandable, but Rep. Fletcher shows a consistent record of votes harming the American energy industry and consumers alike.  Her record of voting against the interests of her constituents should be on the mind of every voter in 2020.

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Biden’s “Carbon-Free” Dreams Are Detached From Reality

October 19, 2020 by Leave a Comment

Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden’s “Clean Energy Standard” is a push to get what Biden and his running mate Senator Kamala Harris think are non-carbon sources onto the nation’s electricity system. While Biden’s plan considers existing nuclear and hydroelectric power as OK, the push is to remove the 63 percent of generation that comes from coal, oil, and natural gas by 2035—just 14 years from their entering office, if elected. But, what they do not tell you is that there is no such thing as 100 percent “carbon free” energy.  Their underlying assumption that this will somehow fix whatever climate change is occurring is just as off-base.

Studies have found that both wind and solar farms cause local climate change:

Forests and trees absorb carbon dioxide, but solar and wind farms are removing these areas as they need 100 times the land area of fossil fuel-generated electricity, and they need ten times as many minerals mined from the earth. They also require expansive transmission lines to deliver electricity from remote sites to high power demand centers, which also involve clearing land. Those long-distance power transfers add significant transmission losses and increased costs that wind and solar developers do not want to pay, causing increases in rates consumers must pay.

Further, massive material requirements are needed for wind and solar farms to replace fossil-fueled generating technologies and those materials are produced using hydrocarbons—coal, oil, and/or natural gas. For example, a single 100-megawatt natural gas-fired turbine about the size of a typical residential house would need at least 20 wind turbines, each about the size of the Washington Monument and covering about 10 square miles of land. The wind farm would consume about 30,000 tons of iron ore and 50,000 tons of concrete, as well as 900 tons of non-recyclable plastics for the blades. A solar plant with the same output would require half again more tonnage in cement, steel, and glass. And, those statistics do not address the issue of expensive and mineral intensive battery storage, which would be needed in a 100 percent renewable generating sector to save power from when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining for when those resources are not able to generate electricity.  And that is a lot of the time, since wind only operates at 34.8 percent of its stated capacity on average and solar only operates at 24.5 percent of its stated capacity on average.

The waste problem is also daunting. By 2050, it is estimated that the quantity of worn-out, non-recyclable solar panels will double the tonnage of today’s global plastic waste and there will be over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades.

The Cost of Transforming to Renewable Energy

The world spent $3,660 billion on climate change projects over the eight-year period from 2011 to 2018 of which 55 percent was spent on solar and wind energy—a total of $2,000 billion. Despite that investment, wind and solar produced just 3 percent of all the energy needed globally in 2019, while fossil fuels produced 84 percent. Since it cost the world $2 trillion to increase the share of energy generated by solar and wind from half a percent to three percent over an eight year period, imagine what it would cost to increase it to 100 percent and how long it would take.

Source: Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences
Source: Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences

Biden’s Plan for 2050

By 2050, Biden’s climate plan calls for the entire energy economy to be carbon free. That means no more internal combustion engine vehicles that run on gasoline and diesel.  Instead, they will be operated by the supposedly ‘carbon-free’ electricity discussed above. How he is going to manufacture carbon-free electric vehicles remains a mystery. Those electric vehicles have parts made from oil and natural gas including tires, belts, hoses, electrical wires, which are coated in plastic including battery wires, power steering fluid, brake fluid, antifreeze, coolant for air-conditioning, transmission fluid, and numerous plastics in the engine compartment. There are on average 1,000 parts made of plastic on the average electric vehicle.

Then there is the carbon fiber, fiber-glass, fenders, grills, windshield wipers, sealants around windows and undercarriage, side panels, and paint that are also produced from petroleum. Add to that the steering wheel, kick panels, air bag, dashboard, carpet, door handles, switches, most parts of the seat that aren’t leather, and center console—all needing hydrocarbons to produce.

Further, electric vehicles like gasoline vehicles have frames that are made from iron or aluminum—the latter produces lighter weight components to meet efficiency standards. The United States ranks eighth and ninth, respectively, in world iron and aluminum production. The leading iron ore producing countries are China, Australia, Brazil, India, and Russia, and the leading countries for aluminum production are China, India, Russia, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates. In most of these countries, there are fewer environmental regulations making their products cheaper than those manufactured in the United States. Energy is an incredibly important input of making such metals (as it is in the manufacturing of cement), and the vast majority of the energy consumed for their manufacture is currently from carbon-based fuels.

Batteries for electric vehicles are mainly made from lithium, nickel, cobalt, and aluminum. An electric vehicle battery weighs over 1,000 pounds compared to a standard 40 to 50 pound lead-acid battery found in most internal combustion vehicles. The United States is not a major producer of these metals. In fact, China dominates the production of battery components. About 60 percent of the world’s cobalt comes from Congo, of which China has principal interest.

Similarly, replacing just 50 million of the world’s estimated 1.3 billion cars with electric vehicles would require more than doubling the world’s annual production of cobalt, neodymium, and lithium, and using more than half the world’s current annual copper production.

California’s Governor Newsom has banned gasoline vehicles by 2035, which will cost California funding needed for roads and public works, including the state’s bullet train, since revenues are raised from fuel taxes.  The state currently collects about $8 billion in fuel taxes and $3 billion in cap-and trade revenues annually. Getting to 100 percent electric by 2035 in California will require massively more money for subsidies to pay for those vehicles and an enormous vehicle-charging network to expand from a 6.2 percent electric vehicle auto market to 100 percent. California’s problem in getting there will be a drop in the bucket compared to Biden’s radical energy/climate plans.

Conclusion

Biden and Harris see a carbon-free generating sector by 2035 and a carbon-free energy economy by 2050 and they will spend massive amounts to try to get there that will put Americans in energy poverty and the U.S. economy in third-world status. Removing hydrocarbons that have made the United States the world’s superpower and the country energy independent is just silly when one understands the extent that coal, oil, and natural gas play in the U.S. economy, and indeed in the world economy.

*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.

For more information on these issues check out AEA’s Vote Energy 2020 election hub.

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Unregulated Podcast #7: Tom & Mike on What a Biden Administration Would do to Energy

October 16, 2020 by Leave a Comment

On this episode of Unregulated Tom & Mike give their latest election updates and dive into what the ongoing Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett mean for the election and the future of the filibuster. Finishing up, the duo weigh in on what they think a term of Biden would do to America’s energy producers.

Links:

• AEA’s 2020 election hub

• Biden’s agenda more aggressive than California’s


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Harris’s Fraudulent Fracking Flip Flop

October 9, 2020 by Leave a Comment

“The American people know Joe Biden will not ban fracking,” Harris said at the debate with Vice President Pence on October 7. “That is a fact. That is a fact.”

Biden indicated that he would ban new hydraulic fracturing in his debate with Bernie Sanders in March 2020, although he would not admit to the ban plan when campaigning in Pennsylvania this summer. Also, in September 2019 during a CNN town hall event, Kamala Harris said “There is no question I am in favor of banning fracking.”

The fact that Harris and Biden both have flip-flopped on the issue of banning fracking in order to win the state of Pennsylvania should make the American people wonder what they will really do when it comes to the use of hydraulic fracturing and drilling for oil and natural gas in this country. Biden’s policies of “clean energy” in the generation sector by 2035, which means removing 63 percent of our current dispatchable generation in 14 years, and his non-carbon future for the United States by 2050 means our entire energy system would have to change since the United States gets 80 percent of its energy from coal, oil, and natural gas. According to Vice President Pence during the debate, Biden’s 2050 mandate “would cost hundreds of thousands of American jobs all across the heartland.” Clearly, it will be an expensive undertaking, but how do you accomplish Biden’s mandates if the United States continues to produce and consume hydrocarbon fuels? Biden’s written policies and oral words clearly do not match.

According to CNN, during the Democratic primary, Biden sometimes suggested he was proposing to get rid of all fracking. CNN also notes that Biden’s written plan does propose “banning new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters.” Adding to the confusion is this exchange with CNN’s Dana Bash during a July 2019 debate: Bash: “Thank you, Mr. Vice President. Just to clarify, would there be any place for fossil fuels, including coal and fracking, in a Biden administration?” Biden: “No, we would—we would work it out. We would make sure it’s eliminated and no more subsidies for either one of those, either—any fossil fuel.”

It is not surprising that the public is confused since Biden is himself. Recent polling of natural gas-producing counties of western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio shows Biden has not been entirely successful lying to the American public. A poll by ALG Research of 500 likely voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania where fracking is used to produce natural gas showed voters in those counties do not trust Biden’s stance on energy, with 22 percent saying he is pro-natural gas, 42 percent saying he is anti-natural gas, and 36 percent not sure. In contrast, a larger percentage, 65 percent of those polled, are sure President Trump is pro-natural gas.

Joe Biden’s $2 trillion climate plan would indeed cost $2 trillion and most likely much more since it would be forcing the retirement of perfectly good generating technologies—many of them already paid for by consumers — that can operate for decades and replace them with wind and solar technologies that consumers would be forced to pay for that are unreliable as the recent black-outs in California have shown. And, Biden wants to do that by 2035—10 years earlier than California’s own goal, which is raising questions about its achievability. Wind and solar technologies also require massive new transmission lines and upgrades to the electrical system as they are not usually sited near load centers where traditional technologies are sited. 

One estimate of the Green New Deal that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Edward Markey proposed totals $93 trillion. However, no one really knows how much that Green New Deal would cost because it is a set of lofty ambitions and ideas on changing the entire U.S. economy, not just the energy sector.  In fact, the Washington Post reported that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez’s Chief of Staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, described it thusly:  “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.” Ricketts, climate director for Washington Governor Jay Inslee, greeted this startling notion with an attentive poker face. “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti continued. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”  Therefore, it is not legislation or regulations whose numbers can be calculated with any rigor, though some economists agree that the $93 trillion figure is in the ballpark for that plan, given its goals of overturning major aspects of every part of the U.S. economy.

As an example of just one cost, consider that both Biden’s plan and the Green New Deal would eliminate gasoline-powered vehicles in favor of electric vehicles. According to a study by the CO2 Coalition, that goal would require a $10 tax increase on a single gallon of gas. In order to make electric cars desirable to consumers, gasoline prices would have to increase to $13 per gallon. Such a tax would undoubtedly harm consumers and the U.S. economy.

Conclusion

Vice Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris and Presidential Candidate Joe Biden both have extreme policies for the U.S. energy sector that will cost American consumers and taxpayers trillions because perfectly good generating technologies, vehicles, industrial processes, etc. would need to be scrapped and rebuilt to their new radical standard of non-carbon energy. America’s abundant and affordable coal, oil, and natural gas have enabled this country to prosper and have made America energy independent once again. All that will be given up, to the benefit of China, which controls rare earth and other key metals needed for solar and wind farms, weapons, cell phones, and other technologies that Biden and Harris deem acceptable.

*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.

For more information on these issues check out AEA’s Vote Energy 2020 election hub.

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The Unregulated Podcast #6: Tom & Mike on the Impact of the Debates and COVID-19

October 8, 2020 by Leave a Comment

On this episode of Unregulated Tom & Mike discuss what the debates and COVID-19 mean for the presidential election. They also weigh in on the energy bill recently introduced into the senate. And finish up with some thoughts on the MLB playoffs.

Links:

• AEA’s 2020 election hub

• More from AEA on the “listen to the science” crowd

• President Trump’s message on COVID-19

• Joe Biden’s message on COVID-19

• Clip from the debate

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California’s Chaos Isn’t Enough For Biden And Harris

October 6, 2020 by Leave a Comment

Former Vice President and Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden is setting aside $2 trillion for his “clean energy” plan that would replace fossil fuels on the electrical grid by 2035—10 years earlier than California’s state goal. California currently requires 60 percent of its generation to come from renewable energy by 2030 and 100 percent to come from zero-carbon sources by 2045. These non-carbon sources will likely be wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower because California is shuttering its last nuclear plant in the next few years and new nuclear power cannot compete economically with these other non-carbon sources. California’s reliance on renewable energy resulted in rolling blackouts last month when a heatwave hit and it could not import reliable energy from neighboring states, which the state normally does when its own energy cannot keep the lights on. California’s wildfires resulted in 30 percent less power from its solar units, which also lose power toward sunset—the same time homeowners turn on their appliances.

Mr. Biden, if elected, will force the rest of the country toward a similar plight with his “clean energy standard,” which requires 100 percent electricity to be generated from non-carbon sources by 2035— ten years earlier than California’s mandate. Whether it is even feasible to achieve on a national scale is doubtful, but it will undoubtedly be expensive to electricity consumers and to taxpayers.

Biden’s Plan Has Farther to Go than California’s Plan and Ten Fewer Years to Get There

California generates 42 percent of its power from hydrocarbon sources (natural gas) while the U.S. as a whole generates 63 percent of its electricity from hydrocarbons (coal, natural gas, oil, and other gases). While Biden’s plan does include existing nuclear power, which supplies 20 percent of U.S. generation today, these plants may not all survive premature retirement. Renewable energy is heavily subsidized through state mandates and federal subsidies that makes it hard for other forms of energy to compete with solar and wind units even when their capital costs are fully paid off.

The cost of transforming the U.S. electrical system by replacing perfectly good coal and natural gas plants with non-carbon dioxide emitting generating resources—most likely wind and solar power—and obtaining the necessary grid upgrades and the back-up battery power needed when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining will be an immense and expensive task in just 14 years, if it can be done at all.

California with 30 percent of its utility-scale electricity generated by non-hydroelectric renewable energy had the seventh-highest residential electricity price in the nation in 2019. California’s residential electricity price at 19.22 cents per kilowatt-hour was almost 50 percent higher than the average residential electricity price in the nation (13.04 cents per kilowatt-hour). The United States currently gets just 10.6 percent of its electricity from non-hydroelectric renewable energy despite 28 years of massive tax subsidies at the state and federal levels, coupled with state mandates that force utilities to use increasing amounts of wind and solar. And, many U.S. states do not have good resource potential for generating electricity from wind or solar. Minnesota, for example, received just 5.6 percent of the rated capacity of its solar panels in December 2018.  If required to supply all of its electricity in a similar month, consumers would have to pay almost 18 times more to get 100-percent solar power.

Further, nobody is taking into account the massive costs associated with the disposal of retiring wind and solar units, which are expected to occur after 20 to 25 years of operation, because these units do not operate for the 50 to 60 years that coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants can generate power. Solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants. And, researchers estimate the United States will have over 720,000 tons of wind turbine blade material to dispose of over the next 20 years—a figure that doesn’t include newer, taller higher-capacity turbines.

While coal, nuclear, and petrochemical companies must come up with detailed, costly plans for dealing with disposal, mining restoration and other results of their operations, solar and wind companies have received massive subsidies and absolutely no disposal standards or requirements. Government grants do not require that solar companies set aside money to dispose of, store or recycle wastes generated during manufacturing or after solar farms have ceased operation. Solar and wind customers are currently not charged for waste cleanup, disposal, or reuse and recycling, which distort the costs of solar and wind power along with the state mandates and federal subsidies they receive. Disposal costs will have to be paid, and ultimately consumers will bear the cost, increasing the cost of electricity even more.

Research has found that large-scale solar power plants raise local temperatures, creating a solar heat island effect. Temperatures around one solar power plant were 5.4o-7.2 °F warmer than nearby wildlands. One can just imagine such manmade warming effects across the millions of acres needed to meet Biden’s “clean energy standard,” which he promises to implement 10 years earlier than even California’s current plans.

Conclusion

California can serve as an example of what is to come from the Biden energy plan, which is even worse and more costly than California’s plan. Biden must remove more hydrocarbons from the U.S. generating sector in just 14 years than California needs to do in 24 years. California is facing black-outs and reduced generation from its solar plants as heat waves and wildfires hit the state. Californians pay more for electricity than most Americans and they will continue to pay more as the state continues to move toward more renewable energy.

This is the future Americans have to look forward to if Joe Biden’s vision becomes the law of the land.  Californians’ energy price increases will seem small compared to what Americans can expect from Biden’s plans that must be implemented in 14 short years.  Most Americans want affordable electricity when they need it, for their homes and businesses and for hospitals and schools and everything in modern life. California’s unreliable and costly electrical system is what Joe Biden is promising to implement nationwide, but on a larger and faster scale.

*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.

For more information on these issues check out AEA’s Vote Energy 2020 election hub.

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Biden ‘Forgot’ He Supports The Green New Deal

October 2, 2020 by Leave a Comment

Biden waffled in the first presidential debate of the general election season on whether his climate plan was the “Green New Deal” or the “Biden plan” despite his campaign website saying, “Biden believes the Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face.” Democratic nominee Biden said, “The Green New Deal is not my plan.” But a moment later, he said: “The Green New Deal will pay for itself as we move forward. You’re not going to build plants that in fact are great polluting plants.” After the debate, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey said, “The liberal left is with Joe Biden, and we will pass a Green New Deal.” Markey made that claim despite Moderator Chris Wallace asking Biden, “You support the Green New Deal?” and Biden replying “No, I don’t support the Green New Deal.”

Mr. Biden is setting aside $2 trillion for his climate plan, which is supposed to replace fossil fuels on the electrical grid by 2035—10 years earlier than California’s state goal— and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. During the debate, Biden vowed to rejoin the Paris climate accord and to pressure Brazil to stop land clearing in the Amazon. President Trump then told the viewers that the estimated cost of the Green New Deal was more like $100 trillion. 

Transforming the U.S. Energy Sector

The cost of transforming the U.S. electrical system, which currently gets 62 percent of its power from coal and natural gas plants that are in perfectly good operating condition and replacing them with non-carbon emitting generating resources—most likely wind and solar power—and obtaining the necessary grid upgrades and the back-up battery power needed when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining would be an immense and expensive task in just 14 years. Add to that the further transition to carbon neutrality that Biden’s platform expects to achieve by 2050, which means transforming the entire transportation and industrial sectors in the United States to non-carbon fuels, and one can easily see how the costs add up. The United States currently gets 80 percent of its energy from fossil fuels that are abundant and affordable and American-made. Last year, the United States produced more energy than it consumed for the first time in over 60 years. Transforming the transportation sector that includes 280 million light duty vehicles and gets over 90 percent of its energy from petroleum products to non-carbon and adding all the infrastructure needed would be a phenomenal undertaking that must occur in 30 years, according to the Biden plan.

In fact, a new study found that 90 percent of America’s light-duty cars will need to be electric by 2050 if the transportation sector is to stay in line with climate mitigation targets set out in the Paris agreement. That might mean requiring all of the nation’s new car sales to be electric as early as 2035, the target recently established for California by Governor Gavin Newsom. The study estimated that if California’s target is adopted nationally, and current trends in car use and ownership continue, 350 million electric vehicles would be on America’s roads in 2050, using up the equivalent of 41 percent of the nation’s total power demand in 2018, which would create problems for the nation’s electrical grid. To change those numbers, more Americans would need to use public transportation, which they have shied away from recently due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden on the Cost of Renewable Energy

At the debate, Biden said,

“…, during our administration in the recovery act, I was in charge able to bring down the cost of renewable energy to cheaper than are as cheap as coal and gas and oil.”

Much of the reason that solar and wind energy costs have declined is due to federal subsidies that were put into place way before Biden was Vice President and due to the technology’s forced construction because of individual state mandates for their generation, called renewable portfolio standards. The wind Production Tax Credit was created by the Energy Policy Act of 1992 and provides operators with a tax credit per kilowatt-hour of renewable electricity generation for the first 10 years the facility is in operation. The U.S. Treasury estimates that the existing form of the Production Tax Credit will cost taxpayers $40.12 billion from 2018 to 2027, making it the most expensive energy subsidy under current tax law. 

The Investment Tax Credit for solar was set at a permanent 10 percent rate in 1992. In 2005, the Energy Policy Act raised its value to a temporary 30 percent rate, which is being phased out, returning the credit to 10 percent in 2022, unless Congress extends it again. This means taxpayers paid 30 percent of the cost of solar energy installations for many years. 

State mandates forced utilities to build wind and solar plants. Between 2009 and 2019, the share of wind and solar power in the U.S. generation system increased from 2 percent to 9 percent, but average residential electricity prices increased by 13 percent. During this period, demand for electricity was fairly flat so little new capacity needed to be built. Instead, the state mandates and federal subsidies gave wind and solar preferential treatment forcing coal, natural gas and nuclear plants to prematurely retire.

The purpose of the lucrative tax subsidies for wind and solar energy by federal and state governments is ostensibly to establish these industries and lower their costs, making them competitive with other existing technologies. But, there is a fundamental flaw in the logic in that wind and solar energy are intermittent technologies, generating power only when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. As a result, backup power is needed to supply electricity at the touch of a light switch, 24 hours a day and seven days a week. That backup power can take on different forms such as natural gas plants, hydroelectric dams, batteries, or some other form of standby power. But these backup costs are not attached to the cost of wind or solar power that most organizations report or that Joe Biden referenced, nor are they attributed to the wind or solar producer. They are paid for by taxpayers and energy consumers, typically without public disclosure of the costs. 

The Institute for Energy Research did a study that calculated the cost of back-up power and recalculated the levelized costs of wind and solar incorporating the extra cost. Including the cost of the back-up power, a new wind plant or a new solar plant would be almost twice as expensive on the electric system as a new natural gas combined cycle plant.

Biden on Green Jobs

At the debate, Biden said:

“There’s so many things that we can do now to create thousands and thousands of jobs. We can get to net zero, in terms of energy production, by 2035. Not only not costing people jobs, creating jobs, creating millions of good-paying jobs. Not 15 bucks an hour, but prevailing wage, by having a new infrastructure that in fact, is green. And the first thing I will do, I will rejoin the Paris Accord.” 

In reality, Biden’s proposed transition from oil and gas to renewable energy would result in lower pay for blue-collar workers and possibly lower benefits as well. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2019, the median annual pay for petroleum engineers was $137,210—three times that for solar panel installers ($44,890) and 2.6 times higher than the average salary for a wind turbine technician ($52,910). Even petroleum pump system operators and refinery operators ($72,570) made more than solar and wind technicians by 40 to 60 percent.

Further, workers who have completed an apprentice program or otherwise dedicated years of their lives in a profession do not want to see their skill sets devalued or be thrown into junior positions in a new occupation. Laid-off workers will not be able to immediately find a new job at the same wage, but will likely spend a significant amount of time searching for work, and will most likely need to accept a lower wage in the new job market that may also mean relocation and the expenses that relocation entails.

According to Biden’s campaign website, he promises union jobs, but the renewable energy sector largely lacks union representation. According to a January 2017 report by the U.S. Department of Energy, only 3.4 percent of solar photovoltaic workers were unionized and only 4 percent of workers in wind power generation were unionized, compared to a national workplace average of 11 percent.

Conclusion

Biden’s plan calls for spending $2 trillion over four years to eliminate carbon emissions from the power sector by 2035 through a set of mandates and to be carbon neutral by 2050, something which would entail much greater costs. Biden promises to transition to cleaner energy creating an economic boon and good jobs by making sure the environment is clean. But those good jobs are actually lower-paying, the cost of the transition is more than allocated by Biden’s $2 trillion that comes from taxpayers and the result will increase energy prices for Americans, limit their choices for transportation and the type of vehicle they can purchase and increase the likelihood that Americans have unreliable energy as California provides an example during its recent heat wave.

*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.

For more information on these issues check out AEA’s Vote Energy 2020 election hub.

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The Unregulated Podcast #5: Tom & Mike on Tonight’s Debate and Joe’s Plan to “Build Back Better”

September 29, 2020 by Leave a Comment

On this episode of Unregulated Tom & Mike discuss what the recent polling updates in the presidential election, SCOTUS confirmation proceedings, potential consequences of Trump’s SCOTUS pick, and what they think the debate will mean for the election. Tom unloads on Biden’s “Build Back Better” slogan and who else is pushing the platitude.

Links:

• AEA’s 2020 election hub

• McKenna’s column on SCOTUS confirmation procedure

• The Debate Answer that Ruined Michael Dukakis In 1988 clip

• Reagan-Mondale debate: the age issue

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Biden’s Transit Plan Is All Malarkey

September 29, 2020 by Leave a Comment

According to Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden’s Clean Energy Plan:

“Biden will also transform the energy sources that power the transportation sector, making it easier for mobility to be powered by electricity and clean fuels, including commuter trains, school and transit buses, ferries, and passenger vehicles.”

Many U.S. cities and states have experimented with electric (battery-powered) buses, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, California; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Columbus, Ohio; Virginia; the District of Columbia; and Chicago, Illinois. The cities all found them not ready to replace gasoline, diesel, and natural gas-powered buses because the electric buses take too long to charge and did not live up to their mileage specifications, particularly in cold or hot weather and in hilly terrain or even because of how the drivers braked. San Francisco worried that the buses might not hold up with a full passenger load, particularly on its hilly terrain. Albuquerque, New Mexico cancelled its contract over safety concerns with the vehicles’ batteries and chargers.

Most recently, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) tested battery buses and found them not ready for prime time. The MBTA purchased five battery-power, 60-foot buses in 2019 and ran them over the past year. The vehicle manufacturer promised the buses would run 100 to 120 miles on a single charge, but the actual mileage ranged from 60 to 110 miles, with the lesser amounts coming on colder weather days. According to the Chief Engineer, “They don’t have enough battery power to deliver a full day’s service.” The buses would run out of power in the afternoon, and then it would take eight hours to recharge the batteries.

Further, the MBTA worried that the performance could actually be worse than the testing indicated because the past winter (2019) was so mild. The mileage dropped to 60 miles when the temperature was 20 degrees, but the mileage could drop even more with colder temperatures.

Despite lawmakers and transportation advocates pressing to convert to all-electric buses as quickly as possible, the MBTA found that the technology was not ready for a large procurement. 

The vast majority (99 percent) of the world’s electric buses (425,000) are in China, where a national mandate promotes electric vehicles. China also nationally subsidizes its manufacturing of electric buses, and is shipping electric buses in mass to other countries, including the United States. 

As mentioned above, some U.S. cities have bought a few electric buses and run limited pilots to test the concept in their areas. Despite California cities finding problems, the state has mandated that by 2029 all buses purchased by its mass transit agencies be zero-emission so that the state will have a total zero-emission fleet by 2040. There are just 650 electric buses in the United States currently, with over 200 of them in California.

Other Issues

Buying an electric bus is just the start because an entire electric bus system is needed. Charging stations are expensive—about $50,000 for a standard depot-based one. Longer bus routes would also need on-route charging stations, which could cost two or three times that amount not including construction costs or the cost of land. Charging infrastructure will cost a major city millions of dollars. An electric bus in the United States today costs around $750,000 compared to a diesel bus that sells for $550,000.

In most urban centers, bus depots are tightly packed to accommodate parking and fueling. The limited space would especially be a problem when transitioning between diesel and electric buses because two sets of fueling infrastructure would be required. Since charging buses can take 8 hours, more charging stations and space would be required than when compared to relatively brief fueling times for existing natural gas or diesel buses. 

Companies must also get electricity to their charging stations, which involves grid upgrades, possible rewiring of systems and building new substations, and, determining cost-effective rates with utility companies. This is especially expensive in urban areas, given already-congested underground utility systems. One estimate is that it would take 150 megawatt-hours of electricity to keep a 300-bus depot charged throughout the day. A typical American household, by comparison, consumes 7 percent of that amount annually. Another comparison is that a single charge for a fleet of 100 battery electric buses—roughly one-tenth of MBTA’s current fleet size—would take 60 to 80 percent the amount of energy that AT&T Stadium does on a Dallas Cowboys game day. 

Some transit agencies have run into high demand pricing from their local electric utility. In King County, Washington, for example, the county’s electric buses had a higher per-mile fuel costs than its diesel fleet due, in part, to high electricity demand charges. The Denver area’s transit agency worked out an agreement with Xcel Energy after similar problems with demand charges on one of its routes. Electricity is metered on volume as well as peak demand times, which can make the pricing of charging an electric bus more complicated than refueling a diesel one.

Conclusion

If the United States transitions to an all-electric fleet of buses, the country is likely to become reliant on China where the majority of manufacturing is taking place. The United States has transitioned from being dependent on foreign oil in the Middle East to achieving energy independence under President Donald Trump, but if Joseph Biden is elected, the United States will end up relying on China for its electric buses and the batteries that are needed to run them. Electric buses have performed much worse than advertised, leading many localities to begin questioning the switch.

*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.

For more information on these issues check out AEA’s Vote Energy 2020 election hub.

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Joe Biden Loves Canada’s High Energy Prices

September 28, 2020 by Leave a Comment

In February 2009, Ontario, Canada passed its Green Energy Act. The act entailed: increased integration of wind and solar energy into Ontario’s electricity grid, shutting down coal plants and creating 50,000 green jobs in the first three years; allowing First Nations communities to manage their own electricity supply and distribution (the ‘decolonization’ of energy), empowering Canada’s indigenous communities; and reducing costs for poorer citizens through clean and sustainable energy provided by renewable energy. That part of the act received an endorsement from Ontario’s Low Income Energy Network – a group that campaigns for universal access to affordable energy.

On January 1, 2019, Ontario repealed the act—one month before its 10th anniversary. The 50,000 guaranteed jobs never materialized. The “decolonization” of energy did not work out. one-third of indigenous Ontarians now live in energy poverty—their electricity bills more than doubled during the life of the act, making their electricity costs among the highest in North America. Its promises turned out to be false, and the actual results made people’s lives worse. 

What Went Wrong?

Ontario’s contracts with renewable suppliers guarantee electricity suppliers that they “will be paid for each kilowatt hour of electricity generated from the renewable energy project,” regardless of whether the electricity is consumed. While that does not make sense, the new contracts were an improvement over earlier contracts that guaranteed payments close to 100 percent of the supplier’s capacity, rather than electricity generated. So if a producer supplied only 33 percent of its capacity in a given year, it would still be paid as if it had produced almost 100 percent. About 97 percent of the applicants to the program were forms of intermittent energy—wind or solar energy—that operate only when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, requiring other sources for back-up. They are inherently intermittent by design and nature, and therefore their capacity factors are always well below their maximum capacity over a year. Wind and solar electricity providers cannot replace consistently reliable power plants like natural gas, coal or nuclear—they can only supplement the grid.

The Council for Clean and Reliable Energy found that “in 2015, Ontario’s wind farms operated at less than one-third capacity more than half (58 percent) of the time.” Regardless, Ontarians paid multiple contracts as if wind farms had operated at full capacity all year. Ontario’s contracts also guaranteed exorbitant prices for renewable energy—often at up to 40 times the cost of conventional power for 20 years of operation. By 2015, Ontario’s auditor general concluded that citizens had paid $37 billion above the market rate for energy. Since these plants will continue operating, they will pay another $133 billion from 2015 to 2032 on top of market valuations. (One steelmaker has taken the Ontarian government to court for these exorbitant energy costs.)

Despite the act being repealed, Ontarians continue to pay exorbitant rates. In April, 2020, the market value for all wind-generated electricity in Ontario was $4.3 million, but Ontario paid $184.5 million in wind contracts—almost 43 times the value of electricity delivered. 

Between 2011 and 2015, electricity demand in Ontario declined, and it has continued to decline. Yet, Ontarians were forced to pay higher prices for new electricity capacity that they did not need since their consumption was going down. They had sufficient electricity capacity—just not the right kind.

Biden’s Promises 

If elected, U.S. Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden promises to forge a carbon-free power sector by 2035. That means shutting down perfectly good coal and natural gas plants and replacing them with wind and solar power. He claims this means he will create new jobs in the “clean-energy” arena, much like the promises in Ontario. Of course, that also means that coal and natural gas jobs will be killed, replacing them with jobs that pay only half of their previous salary, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

It also means that U.S. ratepayers will pay higher prices for their electricity because perfectly good coal and natural gas capacity will be replaced by wind and solar farms. When Germany went on its path of pursuing renewable energy for its electric generation, residential rates skyrocketed. Germans pay 3 times more for their residential electricity, on average, than U.S. residents.

It also means that taxpayers will be subsidizing intermittent renewable technologies in order to make them economic. Or, Biden might go down the path of half our states that instituted Renewable Portfolio Standards, only to find they resulted in much higher electricity prices. One of those states, California, has been rewarded with rolling black-outs as high temperatures resulted in a shortage of electrical generation when solar panels powered down as sunset was approaching and families arrived home from work and turned on their air conditioning and other appliances. 

Conclusion

Americans need to make sure that they do not fall into the same trap as Ontarians, allowing changes to the electrical grid that will only result in higher energy prices, premature capacity retirements, and a loss of jobs to be replaced by lower paying ones. Americans have abundant energy at very affordable prices. All that could be lost with policies such as those Joe Biden is cheerleading.

*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.

For more information on these issues check out AEA’s Vote Energy 2020 election hub.

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