Clean, Green, & Insane

There is nothing like a fiscal crisis to expose fiscal insanity. I have noted the detachment from reality that is evident in President Obama's push for high-speed rail. His fondness for the technology is apparently untouched by the plain fact that high-speed rail has been tried in dozens of countries and has been a disaster.

Much the same is true of the President's fondness for "green energy". The Los Angeles Times has devastating report on one really big attempt to reap the benefits of green technologies in California.

Larry Eisenberg had a vision. "Amazing," he called it. "Spectacular." The Los Angeles Community College District would become a paragon of clean energy. By generating solar, wind and geothermal power, the district would supply all its electricity needs. Not only would the nine colleges sever ties to the grid, saving millions of dollars a year, they would make money by selling surplus power. Thanks to state and federal subsidies, construction of the green energy projects would cost nothing upfront.

There is the dream: energy self-sufficiency achieved with green technologies, saving money and saving the planet at the same time. The problem, of course, with things that sound too good to be true is that they aren't true.

As head of a $5.7-billion, taxpayer-funded program to rebuild the college campuses, Eisenberg commanded attention. But his plan for energy independence was seriously flawed.

He overestimated how much power the colleges could generate. He underestimated the cost. And he poured millions of dollars into designs for projects that proved so impractical or unpopular they were never built.

These and other blunders cost nearly $10 million that could have paid for new classrooms, laboratories and other college facilities, a Times investigation found.

I confess that I am somewhat in awe of "a $5.7-billion, taxpayer-funded program to rebuild the [Los Angeles Community College] campuses." That's about two billion dollars more than this year's budget for the entire state government of South Dakota. It gives you some idea why California so deep in the fiscal hole.

What is so astonishing about the story is how utterly insane Eisenberg's vision was.

For starters, there simply wasn't room on the campuses for all the generating equipment required to become self-sufficient. Some of the colleges wouldn't come close to that goal even if solar panels, wind turbines and other devices were wedged into every available space.

Going off the grid did not make economic sense either. Given the cost of alternative energy technology, it would be more expensive for the district to generate all its own electricity than to continue paying utilities for power.

"More expensive" sounds relatively benign. In fact, it would have been ruinously expensive.

No matter how it was financed, the bill for all those solar panels and wind turbines would be huge. Eisenberg's cost estimates for taking the nine campuses off the grid ranged as high as $975 million — this for a college system that in 2010 spent less than $8 million on power bills. An engineering consultant put the cost far higher: $1.9 billion.

That's five kinds of crackers. To see the full extent of Eisenberg's insanity, you will have to read the article. What is both disturbing and revealing is that he managed to do enough mischief so far to cost the taxpayers of California and the rest of the United States (federal subsidies are involved) over ten million.

The folks in charge of all that money put Eisenberg in charge. Why? Because he told them what they wanted to hear. Green, clean, energy is a pretty idea. Energy self-sufficiency is another. Who wouldn't want to believe that we can clean up the air, stop global warming, and have money left over to fund public employee pensions?

Unfortunately, both ideas are fictions. Neither wind nor solar power, nor, I dare say, biofuels, are cost effective. All of them require that vast spaces covered with panels, wind towers, or corn, to generate significant amounts of energy. Each of them comes with its own brand of environmental damage.

California can no longer afford such ruinous nonsense as the dreams of Larry Eisenberg. Neither can the United States. One can only hope that the President is a little less Eisenbergian than he sometimes appears.

Comments

[Stan Gibilisco]

"Neither wind nor solar power, nor, I dare say, biofuels, are cost effective. All of them require that vast spaces covered with panels, wind towers, or corn, to generate significant amounts of energy. Each of them comes with its own brand of environmental damage."

This stark reality is perhaps the only thing that stands between me and my "dream project" of an energy-self-sustaining "sun and wind ranch" in the wilds of Wyoming.

I've run the numbers, and they simply do not work. I'd go broke by the time the system was up and running.

Kill the patient, cure the disease. What a concept.

Nevertheless, I continue to seek ways to "green up my life" without bankrupting myself in the process. If I can find a way that will work for most people, you can bet that I'll write a book about it.

[Miranda]

And this is just the plan for the community colleges. I shudder to think of what's in store for the universities!

Interestingly enough, for the same price, Californians could pay for the tuition of around 74,541 UC Davis undergraduates.

[larry kurtz]

Let's see...in the time it took me to read your post and type this, We the People have spent another...sip of coffee...carry the three...we have spent another 4 million in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Isn't that six kinds of crackers?

[duggersd]

On a related note, Larry Eisenberg also works for the Obama administration. He is in charge of coming up with the estimates of what Obamacare will cost.

[caheidelberger]

Just you wait: Atlas Shrugged will hit the theaters, and all the John Galt types will fall in love with high-speed rail.

http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2011/03/04/galt-the-musical/

[BillW]

Rutgers University spent $10 million of Obamacash to convert some of the campus to solar power - saving $200,000 a year. This is according to Rutgers and China Daily - two dubious sources (China Daily was involved because Rutgers bought the hardware from a Chinese company - I suppose Obama signed off on this project while he was on his way to another meeting with Jeff Immet on how to create American jobs).

Do the math - spend $10 million, save $200K a year, the project pays for itself in a mere 50 years. And the reality is probably not nearly as good as Rutgers and China proclaim.

What makes it worse is that China is far and away the globe's worst polluter. Obama and the greenies give them (and India) a free pass in negotiating global climate treaties. The result is 'feel good environmentalism'. US manufacturing is going out of business in no small part because of the cost of complying with environental regs. Manufacturing goes to China where they don't worry about such details. Greenies in the US get to feel good about convertng Rutgers to solar energy and improveing air quality by reducing manufacturing pollution in this country. Global environmental quality is no better - probably worse - because source of pollution is on the other side of the world where we don't have to look at it.

Bottom line - US economy and jobs suffer. Chinese jobs and economy improve. Global climate no better off. Greenies in the US chalk another one up in the win column.

[Ken Blanchard]

BillW: great story. Coincidentally, the Lake Andes central school district spent about $12,000 on a wind tower. We are told in the American News article that it has saved "259.5 pounds of carbon dioxide that's not in the atmosphere". That, of course, is a mere estimate based on the estimate of electricity produced and the carbon footprint of that much power produced by traditional means. It doesn't include (I assume) the manufacture, transportation, and construction of the tower.

We are told that the tower produces about sixty cents of electricity per day. At that rate, Lake Andes will recoup their investment in fifty five years. That, I am guessing, is longer than the life of the tower. Of course, $12,000
is not what the tower cost. Two electricity providers chipped in $4,000 each. So the total comes to $20,000. I figure it pays for itself in about a hundred years. Of course, that leaves out the various tax breaks and other incentives that figure into the cost.

[Jimi]

Larry,

"we have spent another 4 million in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Redo your math! We have spent 1.3 Trillion dollars total in 10 years for both Iraq and Afghanistan. What was Obama's Budget deficit every year since he has come in office?

Oh....about 1.3 Trillion a year! Now that is six of crakers!

[BillW]

Yeah Jimi, but all we have to show for our $1.3 trillion in the Middle East is democracy and an end to murdering tens of thousands of Iraqi's by their insane deictator, which doesn't begin to compare with the turtle crossings we got in Florida for Obama's trillions.

[Charles R. Toca]

Don't blame Larry. The Obama money was put out for research and demonstration. Larry took advantage of the funds that would have gone elsewhere. Blame Obama for program, not the guy who used it for it's intended purpose.

And, it was the local folks that approved a tax surcharge to fund the $6 billion expansion. http://www.laccdbuildsgreen.org/

[KB]

Charles: the project was stark raving mad. Larry was in charge of it.

[Tom]

Here are some energy-saving tips for your home: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUNISl0mr5g

[unicorn4711]

I'm going to ignore the comment about high-speed rail being a disaster everywhere it has been tried (really? by what standards?). Ignore whether adding, $100 billion in additional costs for oil imports in 2011 over 2010 (estimate from March 1 WSJ) due to the whims of an incompetent N. African dictator and his delusions of popularity counts as a form of success (or at lest non-disaster) to ask the more important question: What ever happened to microwave energy from Sim City 2000? When can we just put some large scale solar panels in orbit, then have the energy converted into microwaves and received on earth?

High speed rail is a disaster everywhere? What is success? We can produce 8 million barrels yet require 21. Even if we drilled in ANWAR or all over the atlantic and processed all the low grade sand shale oil in ND/MT, we won't come to close to producing enough oil without importing without dramatic decreases in our use of oil.

And what about not being subject to a 100 billion dollar increase in oil costs in 2011 due to unrest in a region plagued with insane dictators? If the unrest in 2011 is going to cost the US 100 billion (WSJ estimate, March 1), I'd rather spend that money on infrastructure in the US.

Finally, our boys from the Midwest have sacrificed enough in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't want to see them have to make another sacrifice rebuilding and stabilizing another middle east country. Being dependent on oil imports compromises our foreign policy and pushes us towards a path of encouraging "stability" in the region. Being less dependent on imported oil would help change that.

[unicorn4711]

Wait. I can't ignore it.

[larry kurtz]

Let's see...it's been ten hours. so, at a million a minute, that's 60 million an hour...ten hours...

[BillW]

unicorn - ignoring the question is rather convenient, isn't it? How 'bout pointing out where HSR has been a success instead?

The problem is that KB cited hard dollars and cents - facts - and you responded with the theory of alternative energy. Theory doesn't wash.

[larry kurtz]

Pfffppphhhbbbpppp! Anyone care to join me?

[Miranda]

Is that an attempt to generate wind power, Mr. Kurtz?

[larry kurtz]

Ever had a shotgun hit, Ms. Flint? Just trying to prove that Ken isn't the only writer with a flair for asininity. For some reason, ip has been allowed to bomb the War Toilet with alternatives: http://dakotawarcollege.com/archives/19336

[Miranda]

I think I prove that every time I post!

(On the shotgun hit question: I did not inhale!)

[Donald Pay]

When you put a price on pollutants, rather than socializing those costs, wind power is cheaper than any fossil fuel. Fossil fuels are cheap only because there the costs associated with their pollutants are externalized.

My daughter's alma mater, Carleton College, has had a wind turbine supplying electricity amounting to 40 percent of the college's electricity use. The power is bought by Xcel and distributed in the local area for cheaper than the price it charges local customers for power from its power portfolio. The first turbine has been so successful the college plans to put up another turbine.

[BillW]

"When you put a price on pollutants, rather than socializing those costs, wind power is cheaper than any fossil fuel. Fossil fuels are cheap only because there the costs associated with their pollutants are externalized."

The problem, Donald, is that the "price on pollutants" is philosophical, rather than real. So long as the environmentalists use these philosophical, hypothetical - made-up-out-of-thin-air - costs their credibility will be suspect. There is strong evidence that the environmentalists are not really concerned about the environment, but are using environmental concerns as a weapon or tactic to socialize the US economy - their true objective.

Consider the fact that the clean air act(s) have made coke processing a thing of the past in the United States. There has not been a single coke plant (coke is distilled coal used to fire steel mills) built in the US since the Clean Air Act was passed. Virtually all of the coke used to make the steel for the United States is now processed in China, where no such air quality regulations exist. People in China walk around with masks over their mouths due to the dismal air quality.

US manufacturers have asked for 'environmental equivalency tarrifs' but the dries have fallen on deaf ears in the pro-environmen community. Such a tarrif would acknowledge that processing coke adds, say $5 a ton to its cost. An environmental equivalency tarrif would put a tax of $5.50 per ton on all coke entering the US from countries without laws similar to our Clean Air Act. This would create a strong incentive for countries such as China to clean up the air.

By refusing to support such tarrifs, how can the manufacturing community conclude anything other than that the goal of the environmentalists is not to clean up the air - after all they seem wholly unconcerned with the air in China and the impact of coke processing there - and that the real agenda is to destroy US manufacturing?

Environmentalists have shut down vast tracts of logging in the American northwest in order to save the spotted owl. But there is no penalty on China for wood harvested in their forests that have driven the golden monkey to near extinction. Save our trees and owls - kill their trees and monkeys. How does that benefit the planet? Or is the goal really just to kill our logging industry?

At the very least, it is superficial environmentalism - more for show than effect. At worst it is, as I said, part of a larger, more insidious agenda to destroy American industry. Either way, the greenies need to get tough with the real polluters: China and India, if they are going to convince many Americans they are serious about improving the environment.

[Donald Pay]

BillW,

Corporate socialists refuse to accept the externalized costs of their processes. Cancers and respiratory disease are not "philosophical," nor are the deaths of Americans in the Middle East.

[BillW]

Donald,

The calssic liberal response when forced to acknowledge they have no facts, logic, economics or data to support them - proclaim that they care more than their opponents.

Support liberalism as a cure for cancer and the key to world peace??? That's the best you can do and it is pure hogwash.

[larry kurtz]

Boys, boys, boys: Looking for ways to expose Republican Koch addiction, ip stumbled across this manifesto on incrementalism at the CATO website: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/02/11/nancy-rosenblum/responses-on-political-theory-idealism-and-extremism/

and this from the Center for Responsive Politics:
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/03/ceo-3-8-2011.html

The Citizens United case has opened the floodgates, we Democrats have to learn how to harness the flood, too.

[BillW]

How is the pursuit of evidence to support the Democrat Soros - er, I mean Republican Koch addiction coming along Larry?

[larry kurtz]

Bill, as ip said at Blogmore, Soros isn't actively involved in the Expelliarmus of The Peoples' defense against the dark arts. Evil walks among us in the form of environmental pollutants spiking cancer rates and in Cheneyistic body counts.

[BillW]

I see - since George has good intentions, when he buys and pays for politicians it is OK, but the Kochs have evil intentions, so when they do the same it is, well, evil. So the crux of the matter is that liberals are big hearted, caring people everything so they do is justified, while conservatives are heartless, wicked people so everything they do is bad. Facts, economics, logic, data ... all have nothing to do with it. Do I have it about right?

[larry kurtz]

I'm getting really good at prostate exams, Bill. Had one lately? Read through this list and decide which is better for our grandkids: "tort reform" or the national debt. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/understandingcancer/environment

[BillW]

Didn't know it was an either/or question Larry - howzabout we reduce the debt, get the lawyers off doctor's backs and cure cancer at the same time?

[BillW]

By the way Larry, I think you will find that prostate exams were invented in the private sector and despite being uncomfortable, have proven to be an effective means of early cancer detection. It was FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and now Barrack Obama who saw prostate exams as the ideal model for the role of government.

[larry kurtz]

I don't disagree with you, Bill. In the words of Axel Foley: Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
Axel Foley
Eddie Murphy

"Isn't that your Porsche? Is it? How would you like me to have the IRS come down here and crawl up your (effing) ass with a microscope? 'Cause they'll do it! I've seen them do it! It's not a pretty sight!"

[BillW]

You just might be the only liberal for whom I have genuine respect Larry.

[larry kurtz]

How are Pawlenty's chances, Bill?

[BillW]

I don't know Larry, but I would have no problem with him. rather than affiliate with a party I am looking for support for a grass roots drive to throw all Ivy League bums out, and being a Minnesota grad - one of us simple rubes from the fly over states - he can't help but be a marked improvement over the procession of Yale and Dartmouth guys we have been subjected to.

From my perspective, thirty years of Presdient Bushclintonbushobama without ten ents difference between the thoughts of one east coast elitist and another is enough. Height and complexion are the only significant differences in American presidential leadership over the last three decades.

look at the advisers and cabinet heads the last four adminsitrations have had. They are all the same guys, who hang out with each other at the same exclusive clubs in New York and drink the same brand of single malt scotch.

[larry kurtz]

So, if the Obama administration guaranteed the financing for someone like Warren Buffett to build the next generation of rail over existing rights-of-way, would you support it?

[BillW]

If Obama provided a low interest loan I would, but I would want Buffet on the hook to make it viable - not the tax payers.

[Donald Pay]

BillW.,

China and India socialize the costs of their industry through lack of regulation. I would support an environmental tariff on certain Chinese products. I would also support such a tariff on our products where regulation is lax. And rather than having every government impose these tariffs willy nilly, which becomes unwieldy and stifles trade, we could try a market based approach where there are global caps and rights to emit pollutants are subject to market trading.

[Donald Pay]

BillW. said, "Environmentalists have shut down vast tracts of logging in the American northwest in order to save the spotted owl."

Environmentalists had no power to shut down logging. You need to be very clear. The dispute involved logging of timber on public lands, ie. on the lands owned by taxpayer's, and did not involve timber production on private lands. So, the timber industry was seeking to harvest public resources. This, you may or may not know, is subject to multiple use management, and therefore had to meet certain standards. The decisions regarding logging in spotted owl habitat involved laws, rules and court decisions, not the whim of environmentalists. The facts are that logging was not shut down, but that any logging had to abide by some rules, one of which was that harvesting could only take 40 percent of the old growth forest within a certain area around spotted owl nests. The timber industry decided it wanted to oppose these reasonable restrictions. It lost in court.

[Ken Blanchard]

Unicorn: by what standards has "high-speed rail being a disaster everywhere it has been tried" you ask, (after announcing that you are going to ignore the comment)? I reply: by the 'it's ruinously expensive and you have to bribe people to ride the trains' standards. See my earlier post on the topic: http://southdakotapolitics.blogs.com/south_dakota_politics/2011/02/off-the-rails-on-a-crazy-train.html.

The rest of your post assumes something that is manifestly untrue: that investment in wind power, solar power, and biofuels reduces our consumption and dependence on foreign oil. All of these power sources are dependent on massive government subsidies. That means that wealth is diverted from other sources to sustain their operations. Since that diverted wealth requires energy to produce, where does the energy come from? Answer: fossil fuels and nuclear power. "Renewable" energy sources increase our consumption of the latter.

There is not a shred of evidence that renewable energy technology results in a decrease in fossil fuel consumption, or a decrease in carbon emissions, or an increase in jobs. All the evidence points to the opposite conclusions. Sorry.

Donald likes to talk about the "social costs" of traditional energy sources. Fair enough. The social costs of renewables has to be added to the calculation. Lost jobs, millions that can't be spent on, say, health care, are social costs of our investment in renewable energy. To these I would add virgin prairie plowed for corn ethanol, acres of desert shaded under solar panels, millions of birds and bats killed by wind mills.

As BillW shrewdly pointed out, "social cost" refers to the consequences of various power sources. It does not do to confuse this with the actual input/output calculations. Oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear power all produce more energy than is consumed in the production. That is the bottom line. That is what keeps my laptop powered up and your lights on. None of the renewable energy sources does the same. Sorry.

As long as the world economy was growing fast, we could afford to invest in fantasies. Reality is about to set in.

[BillW]

Donald,

Your summary of the logging situation is accurate enough. Where are the comparable restrictions on logging old growth forests in China? There are none, of course, so we set regs to preserve our old growth forests, but merely tranfer the logging to China's. The rate of global old growth forest destruction does not change - just the geographic make-up. So what has been accomplished besides our getting to feel good about our forests?

In an age of global trade, unilateral restructions on production in any country to right some social wrong only shifts the social wrong to another country that has no such restrictions - environmental concerns, child labor laws, worker health and safety, minimum wage laws, etc... All of them well intentioned, but none of them universally adopted, so all of them being abused on a grand scale at some of our 'trading partners'.

[donCoyote]

Don

Actually logging on private forest lands was impacted by government environmental regulations. I have a close friend who as a biologist for a timber company was neck deep in the spotted owl controversy and developed the plan for logging on those sensitive lands owned by his company. Unfortunately it turns out that just protecting habitat wasn't enough as the larger and more aggressive barred owl has taken over the spotted owl habitat even in national parks where very little or no logging takes place.

http://www.seattlepi.com/specials/licensetokill/222652_plumcreek05.html

[larry kurtz]

Ken, you're what, 70? I can see why doing anything for the future sticks in your craw. The twilight of ones years can be daunting so I feel for you. Consider Oregon, they have physician-assisted suicide.

[larry kurtz]

Here's the cancer tag at the Aberdeen American: http://www.aberdeennews.com/search/dispatcher.front?Query=cancer&target=article&sortby=display_time+descending

I'll email the Conoco-Phillips refinery in Billings, the earth rapers in the Williston Basin, and the Colstrip power plant and thank them for the elevated cancer rates in Aberdeen.

[BillW]

Ah Larry, the wonderful, misty eyed platitudes of the liberal ... just turn it all over to the government and cancer will be cured, peace will spontaneusly break out, owls of all sorts will happily hoot on every tree limb ... the mind of a liberal is indeed a happy place.

[Ken Blanchard]

Kurtz, you're what, an idiot? Saying we need to so something "for the future" doesn't tell us what we should do. "Renewable technologies do nothing for the future if they don't work. They don't work. Am I going to fast for you?

[larry kurtz]

How about diverting pending floodwater to impoundments where it can be pumped into the geothermal furnace sitting under Winner so power can be generated to an integrated land ferry elevated so we quit slaughtering wildlife on rights-of-way owned by rich people so they can make money?

[BillW]

Larry - are all rich people evil, or just conservative rich people? I'm trying to get my arms around the whole 'rich people' thing libs get so worked up about lately.

[larry kurtz]

I can't speak for all Liberals especially since I support the near clearcutting of ponderosa pine, Bill; and, my agenda for a revolution in rewilding makes even Democrats wince.

Buffett and Ted Turner are my kind of rich guys. Bill and Melinda Gates own properties close by and are frequent visitors in my neighborhood. Bill Pullman has a ranch a few miles from here. These people are spending money teaching humans how to adapt to Earth, not force the Earth to adapt to humans.

[Ken Blanchard]

Larry: what?

[larry kurtz]

You aren't seriously asking me to copy and paste my entire manifesto on your website, are you, Ken?

[Jimi]

Larry,

Please define "Rich?"

Believe it or not your "Rich" too....or at least that's what somebody would call you if you were higher on the economic food-chain than they are.

Oh and also, "and not force Earth to adapt to humans"

Larry, we are a native species to Earth. The people you listed above do not care about Environmentalism....they care about using Environmentalism as a tool to control human behavior to a prespective they see fit. The proper term to use when refering to these people is "Elitist"

[Ken Blanchard]

Larry: no.

[unicorn4711]

"the plain fact that high-speed rail has been tried in dozens of countries and has been a disaster."

You can't just call something a disaster without even bothering to mention the standards used to judge something. What are your standards for success? Ridership is one possibility. Based on ridership, I think TGV in France is successful. Or how about time travel from point a to point b? Again, high speed rail is pretty great. Not being able to be flown into buildings is also an advantage of rail.

[solar power]

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[coalportal]

coal statistics would suggest the commodity isn't going anywhere. Coal reports show if we have to live with it, we may as well reduce the impact of coal and CCS seems to be the best solution found to date. Cherry www.coalportal.comWhile for some an ideal world would see no reliance on coal industry to produce electricity,