Eliminating the Energy Extremes
By Cameron Smith
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas The United States consumes almost 19 million barrels of oil per day. And most Americans have a problem with but cant fully grasp the magnitude of our national energy policy problems.
The same could be said about most elected officials. In order to improve political leaders in Washington D.C. must recognize that both the Right & Left fail to comprehensively address our nations energy demands.
Add slightly less than 1 billion short tons of coal and more than 24 trillion cubic feet of natural gas to the United States annual consumption and the massive scale of Americas energy intake becomes clear. For comparison just consider that China with a population more than four times larger than the United States consumes only 8.3 million barrels of oil per day.
Both ends of the political spectrum seem to understand our consumption challenges but the responses have been categorically different.
The Left attacks conventional domestic energy production in an effort to artificially increase energy costs and theoretically usher in the green energy age. Consider a few examples of this policy in action.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has seriously slowed the coal mine permitting process with additional requirements released last year. Although the moratorium on drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico ended the Obama Administration is currently fighting court rulings requiring action on stalled deep-water permits.
In February the Department of the Interior announced that it would delay oil shale leases in the U.S to review current leasing rules. Furthermore the future of nuclear energy is in flux with President Obama and Senator Reid effectively shuttering the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
On the other side of the spectrum the political Right has embraced an all of the above energy policy largely directed at expanding supply to meet our extreme
consumption.
The centerpiece of this policy is tapping into our existing reserves to increase our energy supply. Unfortunately the policy rhetoric focuses more on Drill Baby Drill than on highlighting the fiscal conservatism of energy efficiency and conservation.
Liberals have seemingly cornered the ideological market on new energy technology and conservatives have done little to fight that perception.
Once again the facts speak volumes.
The United States has by average estimates 47.5 billion barrels of undiscovered technically recoverable oil in the states and over 85 billion barrels underlying offshore waters on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) in addition to more than 280 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves. On top of these resources America has more than 260 billion short tons of recoverable coal according to the National Mining Association and the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
If these resources were not enough the United States Bureau of Land Management reports that the U.S. holds more than 50 percent of the worlds known oil shale resource.... The total reserve contained within these deposits is estimated to be...1.5 trillion barrels of recoverable oil.
Without a doubt we have the resources to power our nation domestically and reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources. Unfortunately our political leadership in Washington has failed to recognize that we must utilize these resources while also taking steps to improve our energy efficiency and reduce our consumption.
In the short term hindering energy production has a direct negative impact on national economy as it recuperates from several exceptionally challenging years. The cost of energy has relevant effects not only on utility bills but also the cost of transportation and virtually every item produced in the United States.
For the long term America is better off having numerous additional sources of energy that are economically viable safe for consumers and create new jobs.
Right now many of the current alternatives simply fail to meet our national energy requirements. Consider the electricity generation that powers Americas homes and businesses. As of 2009 we had almost 18000 generators of various types with a maximum production capacity of over 1.1 million megawatts (MW). Accordingly the average energy production capacity per generator regardless of fuel type is around 63 MW.
But the difference in capacity by energy source is astounding.
The average nuclear power generator in the United States has the capacity to produce more than 1000 MW coal power generators slightly less than 240 MW and natural gas less than 100 MW. Wind (56 MW/generator) geothermal (15 MW/generator) and solar thermal and photovoltaic (6 MW/generator) are all well below
average in terms of their capacity to power Americas $15 trillion dollar economy.
These less traditional energy sources also have their own efficiency challenges. According to the Wind Capital Group on open flat terrain a utility-scale wind farm will require about 100 acres per MW of installed capacity.
By contrast even a large nuclear generator takes up less than one acre per MW. To replace the coal-generated electric capacity in the United States with wind would require almost 46 million acres slightly less than the combined size of the entire states of Alabama and West Virginia.
Americans should join the president and political leaders as they strive for a more efficient energy policy that relies on lower consumption levels and less reliance on energy sources controlled by unstable despotic regimes. On the other hand the federal government should not gamble the whole of the U.S. economy to force such a change on the American people.
While American innovators and entrepreneurs work to develop economically viable environmentally responsible solutions to our energy needs we must continue to use our domestic resources in a manner that keeps our energy costs low and allows our economy to recover.
Cameron Smith is General Counsel & Legislative Liaison for the Alabama Policy Institute.
