Alternative Energy Sham!

You hear it all the time from Democrats, Progressives, and environmentalists --They want more (government and corporate) investment in renewable and alternative energy. And they are always lambasting energy companies, oil companies, and Republicans for not facilitating enough research and development to move our country forward regarding energy. We’ve been hearing it for years now. In yesterday’s WSJ editorial section (subscription may be required), it turns out that what these groups say they want and how it is to be achieved are at odds:

In this year's great energy debate, Democrats describe a future when the U.S. finally embraces the anything-but-carbon avant-garde. It turns out, however, that when wind and solar power do start to come on line, they face a familiar obstacle: environmentalists and many Democrats.

To wit, the greens are blocking the very transmission network needed for renewable electricity to move throughout the economy. The best sites for wind and solar energy happen to be in the sticks -- in the desert Southwest where sunlight is most intense for longest, or the plains where the wind blows most often. To exploit this energy, utilities need to build transmission lines to connect their electricity to the places where consumers actually live. In addition to other technical problems, the transmission gap is a big reason wind only provides two-thirds of 1% of electricity generated in the U.S., and solar one-tenth of 1%.

Only last week, Duke Energy and American Electric Power announced a $1 billion joint venture to build a mere 240 miles of transmission line in Indiana necessary to accommodate new wind farms. Yet the utilities don't expect to be able to complete the lines for six long years -- until 2014, at the earliest, because of the time necessary to obtain regulatory approval and rights-of-way, plus the obligatory lawsuits.

In California, hundreds turned out at the end of July to protest a connection between the solar and geothermal fields of the Imperial Valley to Los Angeles and Orange County. The environmental class is likewise lobbying state commissioners to kill a 150-mile link between San Diego and solar panels because it would entail a 20-mile jaunt through Anza-Borrego state park. "It's kind of schizophrenic behavior," Arnold Schwarzenegger said recently. "They say that we want renewable energy, but we don't want you to put it anywhere."

California has a law mandating that utilities generate 20% of their electricity from "clean-tech" by 2010. Some 24 states have adopted a "renewable portfolio standard," while Barack Obama wants to impose a national renewable mandate. But the states, with the exception of Texas, didn't make transmission lines easier to build, though it won't prevent them from penalizing the power companies that fail to meet an impossible goal.

Now, does this all sound reasonable to you? These are the same people that do not want any domestic off-shore drilling or nuclear power plants. We will severely hamstring our economy and our well-being if we continue to let radicals dictate our national energy policy.

U.S. lifts moratorium on new solar projects.

DENVER — Under increasing public pressure over its decision to temporarily halt all new solar development on public land, the Bureau of Land Management said Wednesday that it was lifting the freeze, barely a month after it was put into effect.

The bureau had announced on May 29 that it was no longer processing new applications to build solar power plants on land it oversees in six Western states after federal officials said they needed first to study the environmental effects of solar energy, a process that would take two years.

But amid concerns from the solar power industry, members of Congress and the general public that the freeze would stymie solar development during a particularly critical time for energy policy, the bureau abruptly reconsidered. (Read More.)

I wonder if groups that currently oppose drilling at ANWAR or off-shore would be willing to fast-track development of drilling for the same reason that this decision was reversed by the BLM; Namely, “a critical time for energy policy.” I think that the BLM made the right decision by foregoing expensive and time consuming environmental impact studies. This same approach should be adopted for oil and gas development in the lower 48 at the very least. It’s ironic that environmental impact studies would have bogged the building of environmentally friendly solar panels.