by R.E. Hannay
* Resuming after 35 years the construction of clean, competitive nuclear electricity plants to replace some of the older coal-fired plants and alleviate the shortage of generating capacity. In the past our inefficient methods, hurdles and obstructing lawsuits ballooned the costs and time involved in designing, approving and constructing new plants.
U.S. ENERGY INDEPENENCE
The most important factor in achieving energy independence is reducing the importation of foreign oil used to fuel vehicles and aircraft. Doing so would reduce the effects of the OPEC cartel's control and manipulation of global oil production and pricing.
Much of the argument about domestic fuel production involves hysteria over “global warming” and emissions of carbon dioxide. The simplified facts are these:
1. Dr. Jack Wheeler said, “The global warming hoax is the single greatest threat to our freedom and prosperity today, the Left’s current and most successful rationale for massive government control over our lives since Marxism.”
2. Among many other scientists who have reached the same conclusion, over 32,000 scientists have signed a petition at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, initiated by a former president of the National Academy of Sciences.
3. It is futile to attempt to alter our natural climate changes. See Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years, by Fred S. Singer and Dennis t. Avery.
There are large undeveloped reserves and potential sources of oil and gas available in the U.S. and Canada, in our coastal continental shelves and in the Gulf of Mexico. No other major country restricts and prohibits the development of its natural resources the way our politicians and bureaucrats do.
Even with all of these domestic resources available to us, George W. Bush’s primary energy development thrust was a ridiculous subsidizing of corn-ethanol fuel and mandating little high-mileage biscuit-tin cars to play dodge-em in traffic with the big SUVs and trucks. In 2012, Obama changed the federal mandate for minimum permissible fuel mileage in 2025 from 20.6 mpg to 54.5. Buy your golf cart for commuting before the prices go up. Obama’s merry band of global warmists and presstitutes have obstructed almost every effort to increase carbon-based fuel production, instead promoting expensive taxpayer-subsidized, non-carbon energy with a variety of uneconomic fuels.
When Americans learn that we are importing 63 percent of our oil consumption, many assume it is hopeless to reduce that amount significantly. In fact, it is not. We could do it if the liberal Democrats in the Administration and Congress would remove their roadblocks. Only 36.6 percent of our oil comes from the Middle East, Nigeria and Venezuela -- the unfriendly areas –- and we could replace that percentage with the development of domestic energy now blocked by Gore’s Church of Global Warming.
Liberals reject proposed developments to utilize domestic fuel throughout the United States and Canada. They argue that it would take ten years to see an increase in domestic oil production. Oil companies say they could deliver oil in two years by drilling known deposits in our offshore continental shelves. Instead, liberals promote non-carbon energy sources still largely under development and not economically feasible. Furthermore, most non-carbon sources generate only electricity and do nothing to reduce our importation of foreign oil needed for vehicle fuel.
RENEWABLE ENERGY
Liberals and radical environmentalists have a religious passion for “renewable” energy sources. Except for hydroelectric, which the liberals would like to shut down, non-carbon energy technologies will likely do little to reduce consumption of conventional fuels in the near future. The combined production of renewable sources including ethanol is currently only about four percent of U.S. energy consumption, doing almost nothing to reduce oil imports. Most other alternative energy such as solar, wind and tidal can produce only electricity and only at certain times, it cannot be stored, and they are used only when heavily subsidized by taxpayers. Several large solar manufacturers have gone bankrupt in spite of the heavy subsidies, but solar panels are becoming less expensive. Windmills are close to being competitive but require large land or shore areas, the sight is offensive to some people and they kill big birds. Other alternatives like tidal and geothermal power have some potential to be competitive eventually. The silver bullet would be to make nuclear fusion of seawater economically possible, with a small amount of seawater producing a great amount of energy, but with current technology that is impossible.
HYDROGEN FUEL CELLS
Hydrogen in any form is not practical now, either produced by the electrolysis of water or by breaking down fossil fuel. The finished product now provides only about 47 percent of the energy used to produce it. If used in an internal combustion engine to avoid those high production costs, the net efficiency in the vehicle is only about 25 percent.
HYBRID, GAS AND ELECTRIC VEHICLES
Hybrid gasoline-electric cars are the darling of many environmentalists, but it seems unlikely that the current designs will be a major long-term factor in reducing gasoline consumption. They are expensive, typically taking about 15 years of normal use to recover their additional purchase cost. Hybrids work reasonably well in urban use in small vehicles but not on highways; they require start-and-stop use. Most of today’s hybrids have only enough battery to move the car about five miles and are estimated to achieve only a 12-15 percent fuel-efficiency gain, compared with a 30 percent gain with diesels. With shale gas discoveries up and gas prices down, alternative systems using propane or natural gas work well and economically for urban fleet automobiles, light trucks and increasingly for long-haul trucks. Given these available technologies, most industry analysts predict a future hybrid market share of only about five percent. The market share in middle 2013 is less than 4 percent, after years of development and sales.
While hybrids are increasing their tiny market share, some experts predict that they will largely be replaced by plug-in electrics, but the batteries are very expensive, very heavy, and battery life is unknown. Electric cars with lightweight bodies have some future potential to reduce oil importation slightly, but the probable reduction of fossil fuel is minimal. Plug-ins are expensive, they have limited range, charging facilities are scarce, and our grandchildren will be handed another big subsidy bill. The dirty little secret the electric car advocates ignore is that almost half of U.S. electricity is produced by burning coal, so the plug-in electrics should really be called plug-in coal/electrics. A change to carbon fiber bodies –lighter and stronger than steel and more impact-absorbent – is another interesting possibility to reduce vehicle liquid fuel consumption.
VIABLE SOLUTIONS
DRILLING FOR OIL AND GAS IN THE U.S.
The U.S. is almost the only major country that locks up natural resources. Most Americans are unaware that Democrats are largely responsible for our dependence on foreign oil. They block drilling in the huge oil and gas deposits off our coasts and in Alaska, and Obama has defied the court by refusing to approve many pending permits for Gulf of Mexico and other drilling. Congress refuses permission for our oil companies to drill within 100 miles of the Florida coast, while Cuba and China are jointly drilling within 50 miles of Florida. For years, environmentalists have prevented drilling on the outer continental shelf because of supposed environmental hazards from oil spills, but the irony is that the Chinese are a greater hazard, neither concerned about spills nor equipped to deal with them. Reports are circulating that Chinese firms are planning to slant-drill into deposits even closer to the U.S. that contain 4 to 9 billion barrels, and the Chinese have reopened an abandoned Russian oil refinery in Cuba.
Environmentalists call the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve an untouchable “pristine wilderness.” In reality, it is a bleak muskeg moonscape, and the 2,000 acre proposed drilling area is only one-hundredth of one percent of ANWR’s 19,000,000 acres (some call it ANMR -- the Arctic National Mosquito Refuge). The Inupiat Indians who own the land, and Alaskans generally, have been asking for years for drilling to start there. The
U.S. Geological Survey estimates ANMR oil reserves at 16 billion barrels. The estimated production would make a big dent in our dependence on undependable foreign oil. Loose cannon Senator McCain is so balmy he has compared drilling in the Mosquito Refuge to drilling in the Grand Canyon.
Polls in Alaska consistently show 75 percent approval for more drilling there, but Speaker Pelosi wouldn’t and Senator Reid won’t permit Congress to discuss and vote on the issue. Probably 60 percent of U.S. undiscovered, recoverable oil and 40 percent of its natural gas are hostage to the drilling moratorium that dates back to Clinton and Bush, Sr.
Another undeveloped source is in the Beaufort Sea, near the Prudhoe Bay site, which does not require Congressional approval, but Obama has blocked it. The Minerals Management Service of the U.S Department of Interior estimates Beaufort reserves at 22.49 billion barrels. One company, Sohio, sank $1 billion in a dry hole there, and BP spent $750 million to drill a well now producing 60,000 barrels per day. Arctic technical limitations and bureaucratic hassles and delays are expensive and have deterred development, but the potential is substantial and its development is needed. The pipeline from Prudhoe to Valdez is operating at only one-half capacity as the Prudhoe field diminishes. For technical reasons it will eventually have to be shut down unless it gets an additional supply of oil. It could carry both ANMR and Beaufort Sea production to tankers at Valdez.
COAL
The United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal. Along with increased drilling for oil and gas, coal and natural gas offer the greatest potential to achieve energy independence, replacing some petroleum-based gasoline and diesel with coal-based synthetic fuels and augmenting natural gas supplies through coal gasification. Coal-to-liquid fuel technology is proven, and modern scrubbers on coal-fired generating plants substantially reduce air pollution.
Synthetic fuel was a major source of fuel for Germany during World War II and it is today in South Africa and a few other places. Synthetic fuel made from coal has the potential to produce large amounts of liquid fuel for vehicles and aircraft. Unfortunately, coal now is a nasty four-letter word with radical environmentalists and their political supporters, so its further development and utilization in the U.S. is not likely now.
NATURAL GAS
Our best medium-term energy opportunity is in large-scale development of natural gas trapped in shale rock. Since 1990 “unconventional” gas has risen from 10 percent of U.S. production to almost 40 percent and is increasing rapidly. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing of the shale have offered a potential bonanza of new, low-carbon U.S. gas economically. It will be used to replace substantial amounts of coal-fired electricity generation and liquid fuel in fleet vehicles.
Anti-carbon lobbyists oppose any carbon-fuel development, but their alternative solutions are neither economically competitive nor dependable. Shale gas potential reserves are large – very large. Global interest and exploration are also increasing.
Dual-fuel vehicles using natural gas are not particularly economical or satisfactory. Vehicle tanks are large and residential gas pumps are expensive, about $7,000. The engines stay clean but power is lower, and highway trips often require gasoline in a reserve tank. Fleets of urban gas vehicles – government, taxis and other corporate fleets – have worked well and economically and increased use of dual-fuel vehicles should reduce their costs and increase convenience. Some long-haul truck carriers are starting to use natural gas.
DIESEL
There is good potential in increased production and use of diesel fuel. The technology of diesel fuel and vehicles has improved substantially over 70 years, with new engines matching gasoline vehicles in emissions quality and performance. They are about 30 percent more efficient than gasoline in fuel consumption, have longer engine life, emit minimum pollution and facilitate the use of the larger, safer and more comfortable cars most Americans prefer. An Audi diesel won the Le Mans 24-hour race in 2006. Fifty percent of new vehicles in Europe burn diesel but only about three percent in the U.S., where lack of diesel refinery capacity and a history of noisy, smelly, underpowered vehicles have limited their use. Marathon Oil Company’s executive vice-president, Gary Heminger: “We see a larger future demand for diesel than gasoline.” The oil industry has been cleaning up the diesel fuel and the auto industry has been cleaning up the cars that burn it. Diesel is also starting to be used in general-aviation piston engines.
In addition to petroleum diesel, bio-diesel can be made from a variety of sources at competitive prices. Most is now made from corn, soybeans and recycled cooking oil, but it can be made from canola, cottonseed, mustard, peanuts, sunflowers, lard and algae, in addition to non-food grasses and shrubs like jatropha that grow in poor soil with little or no watering or fertilizing. Diesel fuel’s greater power and efficiency and the potential for more production of bio-diesel offer another opportunity to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Tyson Foods has a plant in Louisiana to convert waste chicken fat into liquid fuel, and one customer is the U.S. Air Force. Properly handled, such changes could virtually eliminate our importing from undependable sources of oil. That independence, or even some improvement, would substantially strengthen our bargaining position with the world’s oil sources.
TAX INCENTIVES FOR GASOLINE CONSERVATION AND NEW FACILITIES
New taxes, even those used as incentives for a good cause, are to be avoided because our career politicians simply spend additional tax revenues to buy votes. There is substantial potential for reducing oil importing by reducing the huge number of gas-hog SUVs and pickup trucks used for urban transportation, but apparently the only way to do it is with substantially higher fuel prices. Gradually increasing taxes on gasoline – not on efficient diesel – would give users time to phase out their gas hogs, but the taxes should be put in a locked-up trust fund.
A trust fund should be used only as incentives for developing supplies of fuel that replace gasoline. Possible candidates would be tax credits for the expensive opening of new fields such as the ANWR and Beaufort Sea, including the pipelines necessary to connect with existing pipelines, developing oil shale technologies and fields, coal liquefaction, and possibly for drilling in such expensive fields as the area around promising new 28,000 foot deep wells in the Gulf of Mexico. To prevent wasted political subsidies, any tax credits should be based on new oil production, given only after projects have become successful and are producing.
Another possible use of incentives is for the development of bio-fuels, including legislation to permit our military to make purchase commitments beyond their present five-year limit, not long enough to justify the large cost of developing and constructing the bio-fuel and coal liquification facilities whose production the military says they can use.
REFINERIES
In spite of a global shortage of refining capacity, the environmental radicals and not-in-my-back yard crowds have prevented any new U.S. refineries from being built for 35 years. Demand increases but no new refineries are built, while the old ones age and some are being closed, a recipe for future supply problems. New diesel refinery capacity is badly needed. Americans protest high gasoline prices, but how many actively protest the political and bureaucratic obstructions that cause rising prices at the pump? Gasoline has doubled in price during Obama’s five years of obstructing oil and gas development in the U.S.
ETHANOL, METHANOL AND BIOFUELS
Only in the weird world of career politicians and bureaucrats could a plan as obviously bad as corn-ethanol be dreamed up and implemented. U.S ethanol is a monstrous political boondoggle, using a heavily subsidized food product and driving up the world price of corn, a major food source for humans and livestock. Ethanol distillers now consume 40 percent of our corn crop.
Many farmers have switched from growing wheat and soya to corn, so the prices of many other foods like grain-fed livestock and poultry have also gone up. A Wall Street Journal article headlined “Soaring Demand for Grain Roils Global Markets” reports, “Illino
is corn and soybeans are up 40% and 75% from a year ago, Kansas wheat up 70% or more… A growing number of economists and agri-business executives think the run-up could last as long as a decade, raising the costs of all kinds of food… What has changed is that powerful new sources of demand are emerging… [including] the addition of U.S. Government incentives that encourage turning corn and soybeans into motor fuel.”
Ethanol uses about as much energy to manufacture as it produces and is a pollutant. Researchers now say greenhouse gas emissions are actually greater than from carbon fuel when the crop-growing use is factored in. Agricultural economists are concerned about the huge amounts of water used to produce corn ethanol in the Midwest, saying that water is limited and is needed for food crops. Ethanol is corrosive in pipelines and engines. It must be transported by more expensive trucks, railway or barge rather than by pipelines. It produces one-third less energy per gallon than gasoline and its combustion is carcinogenic. A fuel station trade group estimates an average cost of $200,000 per station to install new tanks and pumps to stock the E85 (85 percent ethanol) being pushed by Obama, and vehicles have to be designed or altered to use it. Producing ethanol also uses large amounts of natural gas, and it produces only about 1:1 energy produced vs. energy consumed. However, methanol, imported sugar-cane ethanol and other bio-fuels offer substantial potential to save gasoline.
Even Saint Al Gore of Green has now come out against ethanol made from corn. We should stop subsidizing corn ethanol (51 cents/gallon) and end the heavy protective tariff (2½ percent plus 54 cents/gallon) on Brazilian sugar cane-based ethanol. We have an enormous amount of farm land whose owners are being paid by the taxpayers not to farm it -- 34 million acres. Those subsidies should be ended and the owners encouraged to grow switch-grass, miscanthus grass, jatropha or other non-food crops for bio-fuels. The potential is large, but of course Archer-Daniels-Midland, the farmers, their lobbyists and politicians will howl, as people always do, if their corn subsidies are terminated. New Zealand, an agricultural economy, ended all its heavy farm subsidies in 1984 and rather than the predicted disaster occurring, the value of farm output has increased 40 percent in constant dollar terms.
India is planting large quantities of an ugly wild green shrub called jatropha, originally from South America. It is not edible and unlike other bio-diesel crops, it will grow almost anywhere – deserts, trash dumps, rocky soil - and it thrives with little water or fertilizer. The planting is expanding to Thailand, the Philippines, Swaziland and Saudi Arabia. By some estimates, the per-barrel cost to produce jatropha biodiesel is about $43, half that of corn ethanol and one-third that of rape seed. But the cellulosic (biomass) efforts that Bush, Jr. and Obama subsidized heavily have produced almost nothing. The EPA mandated the use of 500 million gallons for 2012 but only about 12 million gallons were produced, and the subsidies roll on. The Wall Street Journal, December 13, 2011: ”Congress subsidized and mandated the purchase of a product that didn’t exist, is punishing oil companies for not buying the product that doesn’t exist, and is now doubling down on the subsidies in the hope that someday it might exist. We’d call this the march of folly, but that’s unfair to fools.”
Another interesting alternative being developed in western Arizona involves using animal waste from a large dairy to produce ethanol at $.80 per gallon cheaper than using corn. It uses algae to produce both ethanol and bio-diesel. The owners say they can produce as much fuel from 2,400 acres of algae as from 115,000 acres of corn.
CONCLUSION
Our independence from undependable oil sources is readily achievable if political and environmental factions will analyze the evidence, consider the seriousness of our dependence on foreign oil and encourage domestic oil drilling and oil/gas shale development, cleaner coal burning and nuclear power generation. Some renewable energy technologies, like bio-mass fuel, may provide more significant amounts of energy in the future. Renewable energy sources are not economically feasible now and would not come close to generating the amount needed to achieve energy independence, but some have potential. In the meantime we should tap into our own large supply of conventional petroleum, gas, shale, and heavy-oil and coal resources.
A STREETCAR NAMED UNDESIRABLE
It's almost impossible to keep up with the limousine-liberal self-anointed elites’ new schemes to control how the hoi polloi live their lives and spend their money. “Urban sprawl” is the elites’ clever way of making the American dream of owning low-density housing into something malignant. “Mass transit,” which the elites would probably never use themselves unless they work in downtown New York or San Francisco, is their panacea for urban and inter-urban transportation problems, budget deficits, greenhouse gases and SUV flatulence. They just love their solution, trolley cars, which they dignify by calling light rail.
In a few cities where there are concentrations of people commuting from along a string of communities into congested city centers with inadequate streets and expensive parking facilities, rail transportation makes economic and functional sense. In most cities, where people come and go from all directions to scattered locations to work, shop, socialize, run errands and try to get in trouble, rail is hopelessly expensive and dysfunctional. Automobiles are the least expensive and the most efficient vehicles, buses next, while trolley cars are typically several times as expensive as buses per passenger mile and they don’t get people to the many scattered places they want to go.
Studies of Portland, Oregon and other cities that have built urban rail systems have not only verified their extremely high cost but have found that in many cases instead of taking people out of their cars, rail took riders away from public buses but at a much higher cost to the taxpayers. If municipalities charged users the cost of light rail, there would be almost no users, so the taxpayers now have to pay most of the fares to make the elites’ dream possible.
The costs and disruptions of installing rail lines are huge, involving expensive acquisitions of developed land, often expensive above or below-ground construction, often taking busy traffic lanes away from existing streets and freeways. Added problems are caused by rail lines in mixed-use rights-of-way preventing cars and buses from turning safely or at all.
The economics of urban rail transit are ridiculous. Phoenix built one 20-mile rail project for $1.4 billion and extensions are planned. The official estimates were that the average ride would be subsidized $12, about $5,000 per commuter per year. No actual figures have been released except a statement that fares provide only 25 percent of the costs, but such statistics are as unreliable as the politicians who provide them. Like unemployment and inflation data, they juggle the methodology to produce the numbers they want. The reduction of air pollution is small or nothing, considering the pollution produced in generating the electricity used, while the expected reduction of automobile traffic is in the range of only one or two percent and the reduction of highway capacity available to cars and busses is more than that.
A study published by the Independence Institute said, “To pay for cost overruns, transit agencies often must boost transit fares or cut transit service outside of rail corridors, harming most transit users”. Surprisingly, they also found that light-rail transit tends to be more dangerous than other forms of urban transit, causing 3.4 times as many deaths per passenger mile as buses. Light rail is touted as saving energy and providing cleaner air, but the Independence study found the average light-rail line consumes more energy per passenger mile than passenger cars and also that rail transit is not an effective way to clean the air. Even where rail transit has attracted new transit riders out of their cars, rail transit costs roughly $1 million per ton of air pollution eliminated, while many other techniques to clean the air cost less than $10,000 per ton.
The anointed elites say if only a rail system had been planned and built before the Los Angeles area was developed and paved over, that would have solved their present traffic problems. A monograph, The Red Cars of Los Angeles, says “Los A
ngeles not only had its chances for a rail system, it actually had a good one in operation. Los Angeles had an extensive, well-run rail system starting in 1874. By 1920 the area had a network of rail systems connecting Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Gradually the popularity of automobiles increased, rail service to some communities was discontinued and tracks were paved over and street crossings of remaining rail lines became a problem. Lack of public support defeated plans for a subway or elevated rail system and bus lines began to replace rail cars in many areas. World War II brought a brief resurgence in their use. In 1944 the Pacific Electric had 109 million passengers, 1,150 miles of track and 900 cars.” The geography of Los Angeles and most American cities, its explosive growth, the increasing use of automobiles and the purchase of the Pacific Electric by General Motors and Standard Oil of California, with the intent of closing the system and selling the rights of way to increase automobile traffic, the last closing in 1961 -- all combined to end the P.E.
Phoenix columnist Craig Cantoni reported, “Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan said the insanity of light rail should be stopped. The conclusion is obvious. In most American cities, urban rail systems are a boondoggle foisted on gullible taxpayers by a few dedicated advocates, and a gullible public often thinks it sounds like a good idea but doesn’t know the facts.”
The Independence Institute’s report has interesting conclusions. “For many, rail transit’s incredible expense is its main attraction. Auto-haters love rail because it consumes funds that otherwise could be spent reducing automobile congestion; that counters their arguments for more high-density, inner city crowding. Politicians love rail transit because the companies that profit from it are a source of campaign contributions and they can toss another bunch of pork to the low-income voters. Transit agencies love rail transit because it boosts their budgets and national prestige. But the public should not be fooled. For everyone else, rail transit is a disaster.”
PART III: SOCIAL ISSUES