Environmentalism and Job Creation
Commenting on my post on Bernie Sanders’ article on renewable energy, frequent commenter Tim Kingston writes:
(We) need to have nuclear in the mix. Try powering a steel mill or an aluminum smelter with solar panels and wind turbines. Good luck with that! But I guess Sanders is okay with that because he and most greenies would welcome the demise of heavy industry in the US and the well-paying jobs that go with it.
Tim, I don’t think you’re being fair to the huge segment of the world’s population that is concerned about both economic vitality and the quality of the natural environment. I don’t presume to speak for all environmentalists, but from my own perspective, I respect the value of well-paying jobs. In fact, at one point, I had over 100 employees on my personal payroll, a group I paid more than twice the average for our industry, simply because I knew I needed the very best in the business. I wrote a $65,000 payroll check every week during that period. My people appreciated it, and I considered them the bargain of the century.
I know a great many people think of “tree-huggers” as a part of counter-culture who miss the larger picture. And obviously, a lunatic fringe exists in any large group. Yes, there are people who object to solar energy on the basis of the shade it casts in the desert, changing the habitat for the tortoises and lizards, and who object to wind energy on the basis of the birds it kills. They seem to miss the point that coal, per kWh, is thousands of times more abusive on life forms. And to your point on anti-capitalism, are there environmentalists whose agenda is strictly collectivist? Of course, though I’m not sure that this changes the basic equation.
Personally, I give most environmentalists more credit. What caused the spike in CO2 emissions in the last decade? The bulk of the answer is the off-shoring of U.S. manufacturing, and the transplanting of those industries to China, where each kWh of electricity used in these displaced industries is far dirtier than it is here. We got nowhere at all by shutting down American manufacturing; in fact, we paid for it twice: we lost the jobs, and we took our planet that much closer to the edge of the abyss. Environmentalists get that. All seven billion of us — Americans, Chinese, all of us — breathe the same air of ever-worsening quality, and suffer the same planetary damage in terms of climate change, ocean acidification, lung disease, loss of biodiversity, etc.
What I think you need to consider is the potential impact of green jobs. Dr. Robert Pollin, whom I interviewed for my second book: “Is Renewable Really Doable?” left me convinced that the trajectory for job growth in an economy that focuses on energy efficiency and renewables is pretty amazing. If you want to see a powerful resume, you will appreciate this one. And, of course, some of our most credible business books say essentially the same. If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to read Jeremy Rifkin’s The Third Industrial Revolution and Amory Lovins’ Reinventing Fire. Here’s the lecture Lovins gives on the subject. I’ve seen him in action, and spoken with him a couple of times. I don’t consider myself easy to impress, but he gets the job done.
Environmentalists (generally) are not communists, though we are indeed people who dare to challenge the rhetoric and awesome power of the fossil fuel industry. The U.S. has an option to put millions of people to work, building a vibrant green economy, and I’m one of thousands working very hard to make sure we get there.
In any case, I think you may want to reconsider your position that “greenies” hope for the demise of industry. I think you’ve missed this one. Of course, I welcome your comments, as well as those from all readers.
Consider that many of us who consider ourselves to be environmentalists favor nuclear power.
I have searched in vain for a true quantitative study that indicates that we really could have adequate power 24 hours per day 365 days per week using only renewable sources. There certainly are claims that it could be done, but those claims are not backed up by quantitative studies the numbers of which can be shown to be reliable. With the possible exception of hydro power (and the amount of hydro power is limited), all renewable systems depend on fossil fuel for backup; that is not acceptable.
If sensors were located everyplace where it would be reasonable to place wind and solar installations, and if the resulting data were transmitted to a central location for analysis, and if the results thus produced indicated that renewables could do the job, I would accept it. However, so far as I know, there has never been such a study.
There are those who claim that renewables need not completely replace fossil fuel sources of power, but merely to make a considerable reduction in the use of fossil fuels. That is not a reasonable position. The problem with it is that the world’s need for power is not being met now, the result being that many of the world’s people live in serious poverty. To lift these people out of poverty, including people in China, India, parts of Africa, and elsewhere, we need to produce several times as much power as we are now producing, and do it reliably and economically. If even 25% of the world’s power requirements (I include the power requirements to eliminate serious poverty and to deal with the global warming that it is already too late to prevent entirely) were met with fossil fuels, CO2 emissions would be greater than they are now. Thus, probably at least 90% of the world’s need for power must eventually be met with clean sources of power, including the transportation sector, and renewables cannot do it.
We can temporarily solve the problem with our present but updated nuclear technology, perhaps with the new Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear power system. But in the long run, we need a better, safer, and more economical nuclear technology, and it must use a fuel cycle that results in far less waste. That will require spending billions on R & D, billions which must be spent to get us out of our present situation.
There is a nuclear technology currently in use which has very low associated risks, and which can be considered renewable. That source is geothermal power. This power is derived largely from the decay of radioactive isotopes within the Earth.
Drill deep enough into the Earth’s crust anywhere, and you hit temperatures of several hundred centigrade. So far, geothermal power and heat forms only a very small part of the global energy mix, but with more research, better drilling techniques and new ways to extract that heat from dry rocks – possibly using supercritical CO2, geothermal power can potentially provide huge quantities of always available base load power. Such systems can provide a long term answer to base load power demands – which combined with intermittent renewable energy and hydro-power used to balance supply and demand can go a very long way towards an all renewable mix.
I would also say to Tim Kingston that Germany – a major industrial nation produced 26% of its electricity requirements from renewable sources in the first half of 2012, a figure which is rapidly rising. Germany therefore uses a substantial and increasing proportion of wind and solar power in its steel production.
Just how widely geothermal power could become available has yet to be determined. Probably more research should go into it. It’s my guess that it will be found to be practical in a few places, but not enough places even to begin to do the job alone, but perhaps it could become competitive. Also, in some places, geothermal power has caused earthquakes. The earthquakes have not been severe and they have stopped when the heat extraction has stopped, but there is concern that a serious earthquake could be triggered. That may not be a concern in all places; we don’t yet know enough.
Germany even now imports a considerable amount of its power from France and France gets almost 80% of its power from its nuclear reactors. The amount of power that Germany gets from renewable sources has made the grid unstable to the extent that many users of electricity have installed Diesel generators and battery back-up systems to ensure that their equipment won’t fail when brief (sometimes less than one second) outages occur.
Renewable power sources are intermittent and not totally predictable. Thus, when they are connected to the grid, it is necessary to maintain a higher percentage of spinning reserve, i.e., sources running at part load so they can quickly respond to changing requirements. That is an inefficient mode of operation. So, if Germany gets 26% of its power from renewable sources, that does not mean that fossil fuel consumption is reduced by the full 26%; it is reduced by significantly less than 26%. However, so far it has been impossible to get accurate numbers.
I read a very lengthy report on how Germany plans to eliminate nuclear power completely. It would heavily rely on importing power from other countries, including France and Norway. And, of course, France gets most of its power nuclearly.
I recommend visiting the following:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2012/08/28/germany-switches-to-coal/
Considerably more information can be found via a google search: “germany renewable backup”
Wow Craig, seems like I hit a nerve here. Wasn’t trying to be rude just sarcastic. Your reply, as usual, was gracious. Obviously I have no idea what environmentalists as a whole actually believe about heavy industry.
I thought it an interesting point in your response about businesses off-shoring to China. I can’t help but think that the onerous environmental regulations that have built up over the years has been a contributing factor. You hear many tales of what a hassle it to build any size project here in the US without going through years of environmental reviews and public comment. No wonder folks give up and move their operations to China.
It’s also interesting that California, the greenest of green states, is dead last in rankings of states to do business in. Connection? You be the judge. For more on green energy chicanery in the Golden State see http://www.city-journal.org/2012/cjc1025ts.html.
In spite of my curmudgeonly comments from time to time I do consider myself pro the environment. I just shy away from political activism in this area and prefer to see advances in technology and the free market lead the charge.
For what I consider to be a balanced view of energy policy, see ENERGY A Citizens’ Solutions Guide at http://www.publicagenda.org/files/pdf/PublicAgenda_CitizensSolutionsGuide-Energy.pdf
Oh, there is no doubt that onerous regulation, environmental or otherwise, drives business away, and I’m sure that was a big part of what what happened here.
But what I think people (certainly me) find most objectionable about regulation is the political aspect of it, i.e., regulations of various sorts that don’t do any real good, but are put into place to favor a certain set of powerful interests. As shown here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:US_incarceration_timeline-clean-fixed-timescale.svg&page=1, the rate of incarceration in the U.S. has gone through the roof, largely due to longer prison sentences. The main proponent of longer sentences? The prison guard unions.
A kWh of energy is a kWh of energy.
If you need a TWh to run an aluminum smelter for a year, then that could indeed be provided by wind power… electricity converts to heat with ~100% efficiency. It would, obviously, be more expensive then running that same smelter off of natural gas or coal.
The question then becomes: what is the cost of the externalities of fossil fuels compared to the additional cost of using renewable energy? In a perfectly logical world, we would always make the decision of lower net costs.
I believe (though I don’t think there have been sufficient NEUTRAL-party studies to verify this), that we’ll find in cases for metal smelting that a hybrid geothermal/concentrated solar pre-heater combined with natural gas final heating, all fed by a combination of wind and CCGT electrical power… is probably the path towards lowest net cost for such an operation. But it might be several decades before we as a society are mature enough to really consider all the details and follow through in that kind of manner.
Here is an article on a fast neutron reactor that China is developing; it is supposed to be able to use 60% of the energy in the nuclear fuel compared with the 1% that our most common nuclear technology uses:
http://english.people.com.cn/90778/7999765.html