Free and Green

[Guest guest]

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/01/01_203.html

 

Free and Green

A free-market-embracing, green-power-supporting alternative to the Bush energy

plan.

Harvey Wasserman

January/February 2004 Issue

Two hundred and fifty-seven feet high -- and highly profitable – a pair of

Danish-made turbines twirl in the northern Ohio winds. Owned by the City of

Bowling Green in concert with some other municipal utilities, the $1.8 million

machines each produce enough electricity to power nearly a thousand homes. But

these ultra-modern generators represent more than just a wise investment – they

are both symbol and reality in a war over national energy policy that will be

fought again in Washington this year. It’s a war we can’t afford to lose.

 

Two months ago, Senate Democrats – supported by seven Republicans -- barely beat

back a Bush Administration-backed national energy plan. The proposal was a

fossil/nuke grab-bag, bloated by $20-30 billion in subsidies, tax breaks and

other giveaways for some of the nation’s biggest polluters.

 

The administration invested significant political capital in pushing for the

bill’s passage, and the defeat was a nasty shock for the White House. But those

who think the fight has been won may be in for an even nastier shock in the

coming months. As Congress slouches back into session, the fragile coalition

that defeated the bill is already cracking. Now, advocates of clean energy face

a formidable task: Develop a viable alternative to Team Bush's coal-oil-nuke-gas

(CONG) plan, and do it soon.

 

Of course, just being greener won’t be enough. Our clean alternative will need

to make fiscal sense, and will need to meet the nation’s huge energy needs. The

good news: Thanks to a host of technological advances, such a plan might be

surprisingly simple to develop.

 

The Bush energy plan that failed in December was an unvarnished partisan play.

Drafted in secret by Vice President Dick Cheney's infamous task force, it was

fine-tuned in secret by Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Billy Tauzin -- two of King

CONG's most ardent Capitol Hill guerillas. The resulting pork-laden legislation

and the steamroller approach offended scores of lawmakers, and prompted scathing

editorials nationwide. But in the Senate, the final straw was a rider providing

a legal shield for makers of MTBE, a gasoline additive that's a suspected

carcinogen (both Tauzin and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay have big MTBE

producers in their districts). Some have opined, reassuringly, that the

Bush/Cheney/Tauzin/Domenici CONG nightmare is dead – that it could never pass in

an election year. Unlikely. Bush now says he’s shooting for a mid-February

passage.

 

With no time to spare, advocates of green energy might want to steal a page from

the Republicans’ " free market " playbook. GOP politicians and their bloviating

brethren at right-wing think tanks love to declare their support for level

playing fields and " unfettered competition, " especially when attacking

government regulations. But they conveniently overlook the huge federal

subsidies that prop up King CONG. And they miss the crucial fact that, with one

important caveat, renewable energy – particularly wind energy -- is at the brink

of blowing away its CONG competition in pure market terms.

 

Given recent breakthroughs in green technologies, it's now possible to shape an

energy policy aimed at allowing all generating sources to compete on a level

basis, letting the economic chips fall where they may. That goal can’t be

achieved overnight, but it is attainable. In three simple steps. First,

renewables must be afforded the same sorts of subsidies and protections given to

King CONG. Second, all costs must be accounted for – meaning generators would

have to pay for the health and environmental damage they cause. Third, all

subsidies must be gradually, evenly abolished. Vijay Vaitheeswaran of The

Economist in his new book, ‘Power to the People’ joins others in saying, in

essence, that what’s really needed is a marriage between Adam Smith, the father

of free markets, and Rachel Carson, the mother of the environmental movement.

 

Under the Bush energy bill, and the existing programs it would perpetuate, King

CONG gets tax breaks and direct government handouts that dwarf what's given to

renewables. One key Senatorial aide estimated the annual pork fest -- before the

Bush bill -- at around $20 billion. But, he says, " that's just in direct

subsidies. If you count destruction of public lands, artificially low royalties,

R & D for clean coal, the health costs to society of air and water pollution, "

plus federal reactor insurance coverage , federal support for radioactive waste

disposal, and so forth, the real costs could be " an order of magnitude higher. "

 

The Bush/Cheney/Tauzin/Domenici plan would pile on another $20-30 billion in

tribute to King CONG. Proposed loan guarantees for new nuclear plants alone are

set at some $8.5 billion. And the bill continues to give reactor operators a

free ride in case of a catastrophic meltdown. Under the 1957 Price-Anderson Act,

such federal protection was to have expired once private insurers jumped in to

underwrite the liability. A half-century later, American taxpayers are still on

the hook for any costs related to a reactor accident that exceed $10 billion.

The Bush plan would extend the giveaway to the next generation of nukes at a

time when reactor-lade europe is turning heavily toward renewables. Further

subsidies cover the costs of transporting and protecting high-level radioactive

waste. And, while nuclear generators have long been taxed to pay for the

construction of a nuclear waste repository, Congress has been unwilling to tap

deeply into that tax revenue to fund the construction of a

disposal site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Nearly two thirds of the money

allocated for the project last year came from taxpayers, not the nuclear

industry.

 

Fossil fuels also get billions in rebates, tax breaks and incentives hidden in

the labyrinth of the federal corporate welfare system. And King CONG sources are

afforded an epic free ride when it comes to health and environmental costs. Even

without accounting for global warming -- possibly the most expensive of all

long-term fossil/nuke impacts -- the real costs of coal, oil, nuclear and gas

pollution dwarf the already massive direct subsidies and tax breaks combined.

 

By contrast, when all subsidies and impacts are factored in, wind power is a

bargain. Critics have consistently cited only one environmental impact – bird

kills – and study after study has shown the threat posed by windmills located

anywhere outside narrow migratory canyons is virtually nil. Except for concerns

over noise and scenic impact, wind power has no other environmental costs. The

federal support offered to wind producers is similarly meager, effectively

limited to the Production Tax Credit, which pays wind producers a meager premium

of about 1.8 centers per kilowatt hour. California and Minnesota also offer

modest state credits.

 

Unlike the massive CONG handouts, however, the wind tax credits are provided on

a year-to-year basis, leaving the industry hanging as Washington reconsiders the

credit every fall. As if that weren’t enough, last year Bush yanked the tax

credit reauthorization from the federal budget and dumped it into the energy

bill, essentially holding wind producers hostage. The wind tax credit has broad

bipartisan support, but when the energy bill was defeated, the wind industry

took a hit. At very least, the wind tax credit should be put on a five-year

basis, and should be restructured to make it accessible to farmers, communities,

and small investors who could own their own wind farms.

 

But even the wind power tax credit could ultimately be phased out. On a truly

level playing field, with no subsidies for anybody, wind power can compete

flat-out with CONG sources. Where health and environmental externalities are

counted, it's not even close. State commissions in Colorado and Minnesota have

now certified wind power as the " least cost " alternative for new electric power

generation. Studies by the American Wind Energy Association, the National

Renewable Energy Laobratories, Worldwatch, and a host of others tell the same

story.

 

In a classic open market, today's wind power technologies are competitive with

coal, but leave it in the dust once ecological externalities are factored in.

Price instability is pushing natural gas out of range. Oil hasn't been a

significant generator of electricity for a century (except, ironically, in

Hawaii, where a conversion to solar power is being pushed hard). Finally, given

the realistic life cycle, the threat of terrorist attack, and the cost of waste

disposal, atomic power is barely worth mentioning.

 

By comparison, new satellite mapping techniques have shown that wind resources

in the U.S. are far greater and more widespread than originally believed. The

Great Plains region between the Mississippi and the Rockies -- the " Saudi Arabia

of Wind " -- could generate three times as much electricity as the US consumes.

In 2001, $900 million worth of wind turbines were installed in Texas alone.

Along the Great Lakes, big new " slow speed " turbines like Bowling Green's are

already profitably turning wind into electricity.

 

As Alaska-based transmission expert Bill Leighty has shown, significant

challenges remain in getting wind-generated power from remote regions to urban

areas. But efficiency and solar power have no such problems.

 

Increased efficiency has long been the cheapest of all green energy initiatives.

From the time the first coal was dug and the first oil burned, the US has wasted

at least half the energy it consumes. Called " negawatts " by conservation guru

Amory Lovins, increased efficiency can pump electricity back into the supply at

under 2 cents/kilowatt hour -- a price unbeatable by any other source.

 

Photovoltaic cells (PV), those thin silicon wafers that can turn rooftops and

south-facing walls and windows into solar energy generators, get virtually

nothing in the Bush energy plan. If solar energy received short-term federal aid

to encourage investment in PV arrays – something like the subsidies provided in

the Bush bill to underwrite nuclear plant construction – areas like the desert

southwest could generate massive amounts of extremely cheap, clean power.

Estimates from John Turner at NREL indicate that a single PV array installation

in central Nevada covering 100 square miles could generate enough electricity to

meet the entire nation’s needs. Far less ambitious projects could power Las

Vegas, Phoenix, Reno, and other cities in the inter-mountain West.

 

Solar power today is a bit more expensive, per megawatt generated, than coal,

oil or gas -- until you factor in the health and environmental impacts, of

course. But according to the American Solar Energy Society, in areas too remote

to be reached by a centralized grid, solar power is already equal to nuclear in

straight-up economic terms, and is closing in rapidly on fossil-based sources

even without the eco-accounting.

 

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District, poster child for a green energy

economy, voted shut its Rancho Seco reactor in 1989. Right next to the dead

nuke, a 2-megawatt PV facility still feeds the grid. With extreme success,

Sacramento has forged ahead with efficiency and conservation, and has scattered

PV throughout the city. If the thousands of federal buildings did the same,

taxpayers would reap huge savings and the new factory capacity making those

cells would drive down the price.

 

There are other promising sources of green power -- solar power towers and

parabolic trough generators, ocean thermal stations, undersea " tide mills " , and

bobbing wave generators – and they deserve meaningful support in a green energy

bill. All are becoming competitive with the dirty, vulnerable, unstable, and

unreliable power stations of the obsolete and subsidy-dependant CONG economy.

 

For decades the CONG flaks have argued that renewables are a distant and

" impractical " dream. It’s time to put their claims to the test. Equalize the

subsidies for all sources. Compare wind, solar, and efficiency with fossil and

nuclear power after putting a price tag on their health and environmental costs.

Then abolish all the subsidies.

 

It’s time to call King CONG’s bluff. It’s time to make both Adam Smith and

Rachel Carson smile. It’s time to show that, when it comes to energy, a truly

free market would be a green market.

 

Harvey Wasserman is author of Harvey Wasserman’s History of the US<.i>, and

co-author (with Bob Fitrakis) of George W. Bush Versus the Superpower of Peace.

 

 

 

 

 

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