THE DANGERS OF FAIRY DUST ENERGY POLICY
While the rest of the industrial world, having spent billions subsidizing “Clean” or “Green” energy are backing away and the arising economies of China and India are not interested, America under the leadership of the Democrats charge ahead full throttle to the utopia of a hope and change, fairy dust world of energy. But there are a lot of huge problems. From the July 9th 2009 Wall Street Journal article,
Natural-gas prices have fallen because of greater supply and weaker demand, as U.S. natural-gas production has soared over the past year because of the exploration of new reserves. But the economic slowdown has curtailed gas demand, especially in the industrial sector, and analysts expect prices to stay relatively low for the next few years.Because gas prices are so volatile, short-term price movements alone don’t make or break long-term investment decisions on projects like power plants. But just as cheap oil in the 1980s helped derail the U.S. clean-energy sector, relatively cheaper fossil fuels undermine investor interest in alternatives.
And that is without the credit crunch, which has been even more of a problem for clean-energy projects than some other sectors.
“Access to capital has been very hard,” said Bracken Hendricks, an energy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank. “It’s just so difficult to build large-scale, capital-intensive projects” when many of the banks that specialized in underwriting clean-energy deals were sideswiped by the financial crisis.
Another problem is electricity transmission. Wind farms and other forms of clean energy are usually located in remote locations and require huge new transmission lines to carry the electricity to cities. Mr. Pickens initially hoped to finance the construction of his own transmission lines but was unable to secure funding.
ALL of the subsidized energy sources, having built a huge dependent class of crony capitalists are now and likely will always will be driven by politics. They CAN NOT compete in the market. They are mutant creatures fabricated by politics.
While Americans debate “Cap and Trade”, ethanol, wind, and solar energy developing countries who have little or no interest in such nonsense are acquiring all of the oil, gas, and coal resources they can get their hands on. As was just witnessed at the G8 conference few governments are going to flush their people down the economic toilet…….except that country run by a political party significantly controlled by environmental extremists.
How, by the way, are we going to build all of the infrastructure the wind energy will require when every (and I do mean every) aspect of building that infrastructure will be “environmental impact studied” to death and the “Greens” tie up every effort with litigation in exactly the same manner that they have nearly stopped timber harvest in the American Pacific North West?
The reality of clean/green energy is sad. If only it were true. If only it could work and compete economically. It cannot. Not right now anyway.
What will happen to the industrial infrastructure of America if we chase these economically crazy, but conceptually compelling energy ideas, only to find that we are handcuffed by fairy dust solutions and our economy is crippled? And it is happening. And, Senators Dorgan and Conrad, along with many politicians of both parties are leading the way.
DakotaBeacon