A little after 5 p.m. Sunday, a thermometer in North Albany.
When it’s 104 degrees in the shade outside, and the air conditioning is going full blast inside along with an electric fan, you kind of wonder how all this is going to work out on a similar day 19 years from now. Will there be enough electric power to keep people in the mid-valley from suffering in the heat?
The Oregon legislature, in order to slow climate change, has acted on its determination to end the use of coal and natural gas to generate electricity. All the Democrats in the House, and all but one in the Senate, have passed HB 2021, and the governor is sure to sign it if she hasn’t already.
The bill requires that Oregon utilities stop selling power generated from natural gas or coal no later than 2040. And the utilities are supposed to sharply cut their greenhouse gas emissions before then, 80 percent by 2030 and 90 percent by 2035.
If you buy your electricity from Pacific Power, this might make you nervous on days when your electric consumption soars and you consider this:
Pacific Power says the average mix of energy sources supplying its customers is 51 percent coal and 19 percent natural gas. It gets 11 percent from windmills and 5 percent each from hydro and solar. (Most of the rest is “miscellaneous.”)
So, by 2040, Oregon says Pacific has to abandon 70 percent of its generating capacity.
Pacific seems to be confident it can meet the new requirements. The company announced some time ago it was planning to retire some of its coal-fired generating plants in Wyoming. It has an aggressive program of adding more and more wind turbines and solar fields. And I’ve seen mention of batteries to store power when wind and solar don’t produce.
The new law, HB 2021, is 31 pages long. Among its many features is the idea that “community renewable” generating sources can be developed, and for that purpose the bill sets up a $50 million fund. Just what those local sources might be it doesn’t say.
Maybe all this works. When there’s an excessive heat wave in 2040 or ’41, perhaps Albany residents can turn on the AC without worrying about the source of the juice that makes it run. Or perhaps it doesn’t work and the power fails when it gets very hot.
Either way, most of the legislators who passed this law are young enough to live with the result. (hh)
You can see how well it has worked in Texas and CA. Rolling blackouts in CA and not enough wind and solar in Texas (only 9% of the grid from renewables during cold spell) and if electric cars continue on their growth pattern in CA there will be rolling blackouts into the future as wind and solar will never produce enough power. If you go by Tonapah, CA ask about the solar unit which used mirrors to heat a central unit which was supposed to provide solar 24/7. This was a similar project that Harry Reid was so enamored with in Nevada and it is now shutdown for whatever reasons I do not know. Common sense does not seem to be a requirement for liberals but maybe the global warming will provide ample rays for solar unless the ice age predicted by the NY Times in 1976 will hit again.
You’re just a bundle of joy!
Yes, energy systems have to evolve.
Yes, scientists say we must evolve to decarbonize the energy grid.
But, how does Oregon expect to get to zero in 20 years with today’s technology? Nobody has an answer.
So, expect rate increases….strike that…I mean big, huge, gigantic rate increases from the utilities as they pour truck loads of cash into R&D.
Also predictable is the city imposing a “green tariff” on its citizens to help them pay for the more expensive power city government has to consume.
And wind and solar are not the answer to a renewable energy future. There is not enough land or shoreline to achieve zero emissions. Besides, the fight over energy policy and land use can’t be resolved in twenty years. Unless state and local governments declare eminent domain and take private property. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
This leaves nuclear as the most likely road to a carbon free future. When that reality hits I can’t wait to watch the debates on CNN and MSNBC.
At the dramatic close of this philippic, the author opines – menacingly, “Either way, most of the legislators who passed this law are young enough to live with the result. ”
This last sentence rings hollow, especially when all one need do is look up two paragraphs in this screed to read where the author writes, in advance of his contradictory ending, “Pacific seems to be confident it can meet the new (HB2021) requirements. The company announced some time ago it was planning to retire some of its coal-fired generating plants in Wyoming. It has an aggressive program of adding more and more wind turbines and solar fields.”
If the author is ready to accept Pacific Power’s assertion – that it can meet the HB2021 goals, then why issue a perfunctory closing statement targeting younger members of the State Legislature? Given the author’s advancing age, could it be he’s fomenting tribulation, hoping his misguided vexation will remain relevant even after he’s slipped this mortal coil?
Don’t worry about the younger politicians. By 2035 they will be among the “essential” public workers still able to get air conditioning. The rest of us will ride our bikes to the nearest cool assembly hall for free lectures about our next duties.
If this measure were about anything other than the ever growing power of our rulers we would be shown the many pertinent numbers of the cost of the involved massive misallocation of our resources and the resulting measly real benefits, if they’d be able to measure them.
We absolutely do have technologies to meet this energy need, and they’re only getting better and cheaper. Plus these new technologies will keep more money in Oregon rather than sending it to Alberta, Wyoming or Texas or Alaska or to the Middle East where fossil fuels are produced. It is not a liberal idea to want to keep money in our own state and protect ourselves from costs related to supply chain disruptions and security concerns abroad.
Moreover these new energy technologies will reduce our costs by reducing rates of health ailments like asthma.
The Texas grid failure was not caused by renewable energy sources but in fact the utilities down there being unwilling to invest in weatherization for their fossil fuel plants as well as Texas being uniquely isolated as a grid so that it could not rely on other areas of the country that were able to generate power. Oregon is connected to a large regional power grid.
Oregon is only connected to California to supply them with power. Oregon could produce enough hydroelectric power to be completely free of all other power sources if the democratic government recognized hydroelectric as renewable. I am pretty sure there is an additional dam which could be built on the Columbia above the John Day dam. Also, there are an enormous amounts of small hydroelectric sites available which would damage nothing. In fact I own one and I have a friend in Springfield who I applied to develop one with no effect on fish and was told no with no investigation. The last time I looked wind power was 4 times the price of BPA power and the wind power sued them when they tried to cut them off when the BPA was spilling power. Of course cost means nothing to a liberal even though energy costs hit poor people the hardest. How’s that gas price doing for you! Of course we could go nuke and we wouldn’t have to hear about any of this nonsense. How many sailors who served on nuclear submarines have died from radiation poisoning?
Here is a quote from Sunny Radcliffe, Director of Governmental Affairs and Energy Policy at PGE, “I don’t know anybody in our industry who knows how to get to zero with the technology we have today.”
You should call PGE and share your intel.
Nyman: “… and if electric cars continue on their growth pattern in CA there will be rolling blackouts into the future as wind and solar will never produce enough power.”
You do not know what you are talking about. Electric cars draw their energy overwhelmingly at night. You drive it during the day, you plug it in when you get home, and I set mine to charge after 10pm when electricity is ABUNDANT and the rate is lowest. You talk about wind and solar, ignoring production by hydropower, natural gas (which will be used for the next 20 years or so) and the explosion of rooftop solar home arrays which are booming these days. Testing is getting underway on the coast of prototype tidal generators, and the growth of offshore wind permitting has been in the news for the last several months.
Time does not stand still for old people who can only think about the past as the only solution. Get out of the way.
Our children and grandchildren are up to the task of problem solving.
If green energy is so righteous why is it subsided?
Why is oil subsidized? Started with tax breaks to producers allowing them deduct 15% of their GROSS REVENUE for the “Oil Depletion Allowance”, probably the biggest give away since the Railroads got in the 1800’s.
You need to read up on how the world really works. Subsidies are given to increase production and sales of a variety of economic operations. Subsidizing the transition away from fossil fuels are to, literally, try and stave off massive economic impacts of Global Climate Change.
Don’t believe in Global Climate Change? Go back to school and study atmospheric physics.
What did you study that allowed you to work for the government?Astrophysics! California does not have enough power currently and I don’t like to tell you what should be obvious to you but solar is only available during daylight hours, you can’t store electric power, so what is going to power your electric cars? Wind power!
You know Al, I have led you to the truth before but you always ignore it.
Australia now has one of the largest energy storage units, with batteries. More battery storage schemes are going online … https://e360.yale.edu/features/in-boost-for-renewables-grid-scale-battery-storage-is-on-the-rise
Other options are running dams in reverse. The Salt River Project in Arizona was doing that in the 70’s: Let water out of a reservoir during high demand into a second reservoir, then pump the water back uphill at night when there is excess power available.
Offshore wind is being pursued big time because the winds are more stable and available.
You see Al, you have no idea what is going on in the real world because you never look.
The best of America, and a big part of the world, are those people who seek and develop new opportunities that have never existed before, and there is a willing market to use those systems. They’re scientists and entrepreneurs, you know CAPITALISM, and you have no faith in them finding NEW solutions, since you and the rest of the incoherent right-wing are stuck in 1955.
Prof.Carl-Otto Weiss: Climate change is due to natural cycles. Oregon Business Report: People aren’t buying electric vehicles. New York Times: Kerry admits zero emissions in the US wouldn’t make a difference in climate change. David Webb: Climate change revision is the reformation of the new global warming cult. It’s the religion of the left. Thomas Jefferson: Separation of church and state. Old school, “My way or the highway”.
Tell the truth. They are working on meeting state goals, but the market is growing.
https://goelectric.oregon.gov/2020-goal
https://evadoption.com/ev-market-share/ev-market-share-state/
I was just in LA. Could not believe the amount of Tesla’s I saw on the freeways.
Is easy to glow about solar during the summer solstice. Do you realize you only get maybe 10% of that output during the winter solstice?
You can look up historical data at many sites like this-
https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KORALBAN93/graph/2020-12-21/2020-12-21/daily
You know Bob, I read the article and you are right about storage batteries with the exception that nowhere in the article does it discuss cost and the only states mentioned are blue states which spend money whether they have it or not.The proposed Biden 2022 budget is 1.6 trillion in the red without factoring in the increase in interest expense which is coming as inflation is skyrocketing and every proposed budget is always understated. In the article is states there will be a 30% subsidy for these battery plants but nowhere does it state the cost per kilowatt hours and when they say the big one being built will power 300,000 homes that is a pimple on the 40 million + California residents. We are already subsidizing electic cars so why don’t you propose nuclear or are you personally afraid of nukes.
Sorry, been busy.
Not afraid of nukes per se. The NuScale reactor design is very interesting and I think it is under testing at the Idaho National Labs. However, the big problem remains radioactive waste disposal which no one seems to be doing a damn thing about. Until that issue is definitively dealt with no new plants should be commissioned. The disposal cost will almost certainly make them economically unfeasible for the foreseeable future. An by the way, inflation going from 0.2% to 2.7% is not SKYROCKING. The FED has a 2-3% target. I clearly remember when home mortgage rates were 14%+. Your statement is nothing more that regurgitating Tucker Carlson BS and lies.
I was in LA two weeks ago and you could not believe the number of Teslas I saw on the freeway. I was stunned. The market has spoken. Ignore it at your own economic peril.
There is no use trying to discuss an issue with committed liberals as they have a plan for every event. Using the battery storage for 300,000 as an example we would need approximately 1200 of these plants (I suspect the cost is closer to 100 million to build rather than 50 million) to make your plans feasible and the federal budget is proposed at 1.6 trillion deficit without projecting an interest rate hike. And to put it into something you can understand, when the Arabs quit taking the American dollar as payment for oil, the dollar will free fall as inflation in this country, based on Carter’s inflation method he was forced to use, is already in hyperinflation.
Bob Woods for the WIN:
“The best of America, and a big part of the world, are those people who seek and develop new opportunities that have never existed before, and there is a willing market to use those systems. They’re scientists and entrepreneurs, you know CAPITALISM, and you have no faith in them finding NEW solutions, since you and the rest of the incoherent right-wing are stuck in 1955.”
So true. Words well typed. OH and there was the true bit of OIL SUBSIDIES since …what… FOR EVER!
So spot on Bob!