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In his article, “Is Renewable Energy Compatible With a Reliable Electric Grid?,” Mr. Bredenberg refers to a recent study by electric-power research firm Synapse Energy Economics Inc., prepared for the Civil Society Institute(CSI).  The CSI study found that,  “the U.S. electricity grid could integrate and balance many times the current level of renewables with no additional reliability issues.”  The study is an attempt to dispel concerns regarding the variability of renewables, “especially wind and solar…solar panels only generate power when the sun is shining, and wind turbines only spin when the wind is blowing.”

Mr. Bredenberg then quotes me from my report, “Hidden Costs of Wind Electricity.” First, there are several technical problems with the Synapse study and some apparent confusion by Mr. Bredenberg about my report.

The “Hidden Cost of Electricity” is an analysis of the cost of wind generated electricity, taking into account various hidden costs and costs imposed on folks other than the wind generator themselves, due to the nature of wind generation. In essence my report doesn’t address the question of whether more wind or other renewables is conceivably and physically possible, but rather what is the total cost, including hidden and offloaded, of wind. It is conceptually possible to increase wind generation while maintaining grid reliability, as the Synapse Report shows. That would be very costly, however, requiring huge investments in energy storage, in massive amounts of ‘flexible’ generation, and the abandonment of well functioning existing power plants (not yet fully amortized), as noted by Synapse. In short, the study calls for the complete replacement of a working system.

Making it more difficult and complex to maintain power, frequency, and voltage will strain both the generation equipment and personnel, and that will increase the probability of a cascading failure.  It does not, as they claim, lead to more reliable service.

In all regions analyzed by Synapse, imports are required to maintain load (i.e. matching demand and supply).  In other words, load was not satisfied by the renewables scenario, but depended on imports from other regions and on increased “flexible generation.”  In a select few cases, wind generation is curtailed even when available, but the report does not make clear whether that is timely and available to other regions for use.  Curtailment means the wind is wasted. In other words, reliability requires resources beyond the renewables. The Synapse conclusion is at odds with the Synapse analysis.

The terms “backup” and “balancing” have different meanings. Backup generally refers to the requirement to provide power when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing. That is a multiple-hours, or diurnal or longer phenomenon. Balancing refers to the instantaneous (less than 1/60 second) requirement to maintain harmony on the grid for power, voltage and frequency.  It can be threatened when the wind suddenly increases or decreases, like when it gusts.  Wind creates threats to the grid’s stability as much, if not more, when it’s is generating ‘full out’ than when it’s off due to lack of wind. It is that phenomenon to which I refer in the piece quoted by Mr. Bredenberg – operating flexible generation units in stop and go mode degrades their efficiency compared to ‘cruising.’ That has both capital recovery and fuel cost implications which are not considered in the Synapse report.

The terms ‘predictability’ and ‘stable’ are also confused when discussing wind forecasting done by regional grid operators. Having been involved with improvements to wind forecasting for twenty years, this is particularly disturbing.  Wind forecasting HAS improved greatly over that time, but being able to predict the wind for tomorrow as likely being ‘gusty’ is far different than being able to manage wind’s ‘instability.’ Remember, wind’s output is a cube function of the wind speed, so a gust at 20 mph produces eight times the electricity as does a 10 mph baseline wind.  If that’s happening every five minutes, for example, the grid operator will have a very serious challenge regardless of whether he anticipated it ahead of time or not. Knowing the wind will be gusty tomorrow does not mean anything can be done about it when it occurs.

Finally, the Synapse report acknowledges the need for increased Demand Side Management, which is just one way of saying electricity is turned off when supply is short of demand.  That can be voluntary through programs customers sign up for with incentives (they’re paid to not use electricity) or through involuntary central dispatch decisions.  Either way, load is not met if it is traditionally defined as meeting customer demand. Turning off customers’ lights is hardly maintaining reliable service.

The Synapse report addresses different issues than does Hidden Cost Of Wind Energy, and glosses over some significant cost items: huge additional transmission lines that are seldom used, untested and costly large amounts of energy storage, and the capital recovery and efficiency impacts of the ‘flexible generation’ required to maintain the grid. The report’s suggestion that the ‘all renewables’ scenario would result in cost savings of $83 billion compared to business as usual is unsupported.

In an opinion piece in Monday’s LA Times, Doyle McManus touts a new carbon tax as something ‘everyone should love.’  Quite the contrary, it has something for everyone to hate.  Put aside that a carbon tax is extremely regressive, hurts the poor most of all, the use of fossil fuels has increased life expectancy by double over the past 150 years, and that it favors cronyism.  The worst part of a carbon tax is that it would achieve the exact opposite of what supporters claim.

One of the main “benefits” proponents of the tax claim are reductions in climate changing greenhouse gas emissions. Mr. McManus and others fail to acknowledge ‘leakage’ that would occur as the relative costs of the production of all U.S. goods increase as a result of such a tax.  Leakage occurs when manufacturing and agricultural production move to locations, like China and South America, where the emissions of greenhouse gasses are higher than they are here, for each unit of production. From 2000 to 2010, the carbon dioxide intensity of the U.S. economy—measured as metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e) emitted per million dollars of gross domestic product (GDP) — improved by over 17 percent or 1.7 percent per year. The decrease in U.S. CO2 emissions in 2009 resulted primarily from three factors: economic recession, a particularly hard-hit energy-intensive industries sector, and a large drop in the price of natural gas that caused fuel switching away from coal to natural gas, which further lowered our emissions intensity. Improvements occurred even in years of economic growth, not just recession.

The US emits more in aggregate simply because we make more. We are often criticized for emitting 20% of the global greenhouse gasses with only 5% of the population.  Less often mentioned is that we’re responsible for 30% of the world’s GDP. In reality we feed, clothe and supply the world and are better at it than most.

The US is better on average than the rest of the world in terms of intensity, with but a few exceptions. Implementing a carbon tax will increase global emissions, by forcing businesses, manufacturing, and even agriculture activity outside the US, where emissions intensities are much worse, leading to net emissions increases.

A carbon tax would also impede President Obama’s call to increase exports to aid our economic recovery.   The US will simply begin importing more goods we used to produce and grow domestically — cement from Mexico, food from South America, high tech devices from Asia– with a net increase in global emissions. Other countries will also simply import from places other than the US. That’s not what proponents of a carbon tax claim, but it’s what will result, and in the end emissions will increase.

Larry Bell, Forbes, February 17, 2013

“Sue and Settle “ practices, sometimes referred to as “friendly lawsuits”, are cozy deals through which far-left radical environmental groups file lawsuits against federal agencies wherein  court-ordered “consent decrees” are issued based upon a prearranged settlement agreement they collaboratively craft together in advance behind closed doors.

Michael Bastasch, In Business,Daily Caller News, December 31,2012

As lawmakers rush to hash out a deal to extend tax credits for wind energy generation, a new report shows that, once hidden costs are accounted for, the true cost of wind power generation is twice that of what previous government estimates have shown.

Steve Milloy, Washington Times, December 31, 2012:  The Obama Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says no law empowers any judge to stop it from conducting illegal scientific experiments on seniors, children and the sick. That astounding assertion will be tested Friday, when a federal district court in Alexandria decides whether it has jurisdiction to hear claims made by the American Tradition Institute that EPA researchers are exposing unwary and genetically susceptible senior citizens to air pollutants the agency says can cause a variety of serious cardiac and respiratory problems, including sudden death.

For Immediate Release:

Contact:           Sean Parnell

                        571-289-1374

                        sean@impactpolicymanagement.com

Wind Power Costs Almost Twice ‘Official’ Estimates,

According To New Report

 December 20, 2012 (Washington, DC) – A new report by the American Tradition Institute (ATI) finds that the full cost of wind electricity is nearly twice what has typically been reported, once hidden costs and subsidies are taken into account. The report, “The Hidden Costs of Wind Electricity,” provides an analysis of three major costs that past estimates have ignored.

“The costs that have been left out of previous reports are the costs of paying for the fossil-fired plants that must balance wind’s variations, the inefficiencies that wind imposes on those plants, and the cost of longer-distance transmission,” said George Taylor, Senior Fellow in Energy Policy at ATI and lead author of the study.  “Once these hidden costs are included and subsidies are excluded, wind generation is not close to being competitive with conventional generation sources such as natural gas, coal or nuclear.”

Using conservative estimates for these real but hidden costs and adding them to the Energy Information Administration (EIA)’s and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s most recent generation-cost reports nearly doubles wind’s projected cost – from 8 cents per kilowatt-hour without them to 15 cents per kWh with them.

That 15 cents/kWh is triple the current cost of natural gas-fired generation and 40 to 50% higher than EIA’s estimates for the cost of new nuclear or coal-fired generation.

“Because wind is an intermittent source of electricity, it needs appropriate amounts of fossil-fueled capacity ready at all times to balance its large and rapid variations,” said Tom Tanton, Director of Science & Technology Assessment at ATI and a co-author of the report. “Those primary fossil plants then operate less efficiently than if they were running full-time without wind, meaning that any savings of gas and coal or any reductions in emissions are much less than simple calculations would indicate.”

The report is available at atinstitute.org

The American Tradition Institute is a public policy research and educational foundation whose goal is to advance the national discussion about environmental issues, natural resource management, responsible land use and energy development.

A new report by the American Tradition Institute (ATI) finds that the full cost of wind electricity is nearly twice what has typically been reported, once hidden costs and subsidies are taken into account. The report, “The Hidden Costs of Wind Electricity,” provides an analysis of three major costs that past estimates have ignored.

“The costs that have been left out of previous reports are the costs of paying for the fossil-fired plants that must balance wind’s variations, the inefficiencies that wind imposes on those plants, and the cost of longer-distance transmission,” said George Taylor, Senior Fellow in Energy Policy at ATI and lead author of the study.  “Once these hidden costs are included and subsidies are excluded, wind generation is not close to being competitive with conventional generation sources such as natural gas, coal or nuclear.”

Using conservative estimates for these real but hidden costs and adding them to the Energy Information Administration (EIA)’s and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s most recent generation-cost reports nearly doubles wind’s projected cost – from 8 cents per kilowatt-hour without them to 15 cents per kWh with them.

That 15 cents/kWh is triple the current cost of natural gas-fired generation and 40 to 50% higher than EIA’s estimates for the cost of new nuclear or coal-fired generation.

“Because wind is an intermittent source of electricity, it needs appropriate amounts of fossil-fueled capacity ready at all times to balance its large and rapid variations,” said Tom Tanton, Director of Science & Technology Assessment at ATI and a co-author of the report. “Those primary fossil plants then operate less efficiently than if they were running full-time without wind, meaning that any savings of gas and coal or any reductions in emissions are much less than simple calculations would indicate.”

The report is available at atinstitute.org

Washington Times Dec. 19, 2012  George Taylor and Tom Tanton

Wind-energy advocates claim that with just one more extension of the 20-year-old “temporary” wind-production tax credit, wind generation finally could become competitive with conventional sources of electricity. The truth is, it’s never been competitive .

The Washington Times, by Steve Milloy, October 18, 2012

Based on thousands of pages of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, since 2004 and continuing through the Obama administration, the EPA intentionally has been exposing dozens, if not hundreds, of human subjects to extraordinarily high levels of air pollutants such as diesel exhaust and fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5. The experiments occurred at an EPA facility located on the campus of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

Many of the study subjects were health-impaired — suffering from asthma, metabolic syndrome, old age (up to 75 years) or, worse, combinations of those factors. They were all financially needy, since they enrolled in the experiments for compensation of $12 per hour.

Since 1997, the EPA has regulated PM2.5, which is also a major component of diesel exhaust, on the basis that it kills people. In 2004, the EPA determined that PM2.5 could kill on a short-term basis — i.e., within hours or days of exposure. The EPA also determined in 2004 that there is no safe level of exposure to PM2.5. That is, any inhalation of PM2.5 can kill. EPA says health-impaired people and the elderly are most vulnerable to the effects of PM2.5. EPA also says the evidence is strong that PM2.5 and diesel exhaust cause cancer.

The chairman of EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Council, Dr. Jonathan M. Samet, wrote in a 2011 commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine that there is no safe exposure to PM2.5, a view reiterated to House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, Michigan Republican, in a February 2012 letter by EPA’s air chief, Gina McCarthy.

EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson testified in Congress in September 2011, “Particulate matter causes premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying sooner than you should.” She also testified, “If we could reduce particulate matter to levels that are healthy, we would have an identical impact to finding a cure for cancer.” Cancer kills about 570,000 people in the U.S. annually, according to the American Cancer Society.

EPA does more than just say bad things about PM2.5 and diesel exhaust. It has issued stringent multibillion-dollar regulations that limit emissions. In addition to setting national air quality standards, which EPA is in the process of tightening, the agency has issued many rules during the Obama administration, the two biggest being the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. EPA’s cost-benefit justification for both rules depends entirely on its condemnation of PM2.5 as a killer.

In addition to testing the lethal and cancer-causing PM2.5 and diesel exhaust on frail and needy people, the EPA failed to inform the study subjects that it had determined that those substances were so deadly and toxic.

While EPA repeatedly over many years has told the public and Congress that PM2.5 can kill within hours of exposure, the agency only told the study subjects, for example, “You may experience some minor degree of airway irritation, cough or shortness of breath or wheezing. These symptoms typically disappear two to four hours after exposure, but may last longer for particularly sensitive people.”

One obese woman with a personal and family history of heart disease developed a cardiac arrhythmia during her experiment. She was rushed to the hospital for an overnight stay. The EPA, in a published report, attributed her heart problem to PM2.5, but it then failed to warn subsequent human subjects of the risks of cardiac arrhythmia.

In its lawsuit against the EPA, the nonprofit American Tradition Institute asserts that all this conduct runs afoul of virtually every rule and ethical standard established since World War II and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments to protect human study subjects from rogue and abusive scientific research.

In answer to the lawsuit, EPA included a declaration in which the clinical studies coordinator claims to verbally warn study subjects right before experimentation, “There is the possibility you may die from this.” In addition to the shocking nature of this “warning,” even if it were acceptable to risk the lives of human study subjects for the sake of science, such a warning would need to be in writing, according to the Common Rule.

EPA also has potential civil liability to the study subjects and criminal liability for fraud and assault and battery. While the mere testing of such toxic substances clearly is prohibited, EPA has compounded wrongdoing with its failure to obtain informed consent.

So if PM2.5 and diesel exhaust are, in fact, as dangerous as EPA says, the agency could face serious legal liabilities. The only way the agency wouldn’t face those liabilities would be if it has been grossly misleading the public, and Congress and PM2.5 and diesel exhaust aren’t really so toxic after all.

At least three of the EPA researchers involved in these experiments are North Carolina-licensed physicians. The North Carolina Medical Board has opened an investigation. The University of North Carolina School of Medicine, which provided EPA with the required institutional review board for approving the experiments, has commenced its own inquiry. In contrast, the Obama-appointed Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues has refused so far to get involved, despite multiple requests, claiming it already has a full agenda.

Because EPA so far has resisted efforts, including those of Congress, to respond substantively to these allegations, it will now have the opportunity to do so before a federal judge and, possibly, North Carolina state courts.