“Short term” is precisely the apt phrase. Sooner or later, we gotta stop burning carbon fuels, and we don’t know how yet. Which bet would you rather make? We figure another way out, or we die?
We are tripping over ourselves to build them, that is why wind energy grows at 20%+ a year. In the US wind capacity went up 60% in 2008. Solar is expected to do the same soon, growing exponentially as it becomes a cheaper alternative to coal or natural gas.
Wind energy used to make up less than 1% of energy a few years ago. Now some states like Iowa get 10% of energy from wind, and the US could have 10-20% of its grid energy from wind by the 2020s.
It is growing fast; it’s not growing exponentially. And it will top out at a relatively low level compared to the entire US grid demand.
Even if a huge amount of wind potential capacity goes online, there is of course the issue of capacity factor. And then there’s the issue of frequency stabilization with baseload generation. I’m not going to repeat myself on these issues.
As of the 12 months ending May 2009, ALL non-hydro renewables only accounted for 3.2% of US electrical generation (cite: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1.html) This is not much different than the 2.2% in 1995.
Edited: fucking computer, I’ll need to post more in a second post.
My second post, now that my computer is working, is that I’m 110% in favor of wind, and I hope it keeps growing. Ten percent of total generation is probably, and 20% very possible IMO.
There are lots of alternate forms of energy power. They should all be used as much as possible. Will they supplant oil and coal? For sure not in the near future, but we should push them as hard as possible. Who knows what the future holds ?
I think only the truly deluded will say that “(insert alternative energy of choice) will power the world”, at least as the technology is as it is now. It’s going to be a pantheon of these energies and a Smart Grid that’s going to get us the most bang for our buck.
Yes, we’ve got a lot of coal, but it’s not renewable or clean. It’s performed admirably for our nation through, but it’s time for the next thing in the very near future.
10% of Germany’s power comes from solar. I don’t see why we can’t get that at least. That coupled with 10 or 20% from wind, some from tidal, and the picture starts to get clearer.
Out of curiosity, where are you getting those numbers from? They are incorrect, I fear. (And what is it about Germany on this message board? A while back I had to debunk a “Germany gets unrealistic X% of power from wind” meme in GQ.)
From: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5449
From: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/04/AR2007050402466.html
From: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/business/worldbusiness/16solar.html
Good question, and I can’t find the cite. However, I’ll happily retract it. Stuff I’m looking up falls more in line with what you said.
Upon review, I may have conflated the amount of solar stuff that Germany buys with the amount of power it generates.
Also, why Germany? It invests a lot in solar technology and everyone knows that Germany isn’t the sunniest place in the universe. If solar is viable in Germany, it’s viable in the States.
Germany manufactures half the world solar panels. They have 15 plants producing them. Those are green jobs because the plants are totally green. Part of the manufacturing process is improving line techniques and improving the product. They will get better and better. They will be made faster and cheaper.
I don’t see conventional solar cells ever being really useful on a cost/kwh basis. There are a number of thin film systems in production that may brighten our day. You can buy panels that replace shingles, which is the right direction to move toward. it’s expensive (stupid) to constantly replace both shingles and solar panels.
Personally, I would rather invest in coal in the short term and refine bio-algae diesel to a practical point so we can marry the 2 together (co2 from coal plants are used to feed the algae). Dollar for dollar, I see it as the most practical short-term technology for removing large amounts of Co2. All the necessary infrastructure is in place to make it happen so it’s really just a matter of bridging the gap on the cost of oil refinement.
The next best investment in energy production/conservation technology is the use of geothermal heat pumps in place of traditional air conditioning/heating units. The savings are substantial which would translate directly into relief for the power grid. The technology itself is mature and just needs a mainstream nudge to lower the cost of installation. If you can lower the trenching costs or drilling costs for a closed loop system then traditional systems will disappear.
If we just focused on these 2 technologies on a national level we would be energy independent and the money flowing out of the country would be remain internally and that would have a huge affect on tax revenue. More money in the banks would result in lower interest rates, which would result in more business loans.
On the same vein of thought. When I see money spent on hybrids I have to ask if it’s the best return on investment. Currently, a hybrid car is roughly comparable to a diesel in fuel economy yet has a smaller consumer base because it lacks the power of a diesel car and it costs more. It’s all about dollar value. The more people you can put behind efficient automobiles the greater the achieved objective.
We need the most practical, cost-effective solutions to clean power.
For the record, I know what a ‘green job’ is. I kind of work in one myself. Wind is a pretty good technology for niche areas. Solar too. Both together will be lucky to make up more than 20% of our total power needs for the foreseeable future (i.e. the next 30-50 years).
But what I’m unclear on is exactly what people expect from a ‘green jobs czar’, or how a ‘green economy’ is somehow supposed to be a savior of the U.S. and allow the country to become more environmentally friendly while at the same time creating jobs and GDP growth. Because it seems to me that if there was profit to be made here, people would be investing in it without the help of a Czar.
The most baffling part of this to me is the notion that somehow a ‘green economy’ is going to be even better than the old one from an economic standpoint, and how it will be a net creator of jobs. Because the way I see it, the only way to stimulate more alternative energy is to either pay for it with government money, or provide government tax credits so people will invest in it, or tax and regulate other forms of energy to make ‘green’ jobs spring up and shift the balance towards alternative energy.
None of these strategies improve the economy. All of them have the net effect of raising your energy costs. If you want to argue that saving the earth is worth the cost, fine. That’s a reasonable argument. But it seems to me that the argument goes something like this:
- provide ‘incentives’ to build green technologies.
- tax and regulate other forms of energy.
- ???
- PROFIT!
It’s that last step that confuses me. I know the boilerplate - invest now, drive costs down, learn how to do the technology, become a world leader, then everyone beats a path to your door. The thing is, that’s a dream, and not a strategy. I could say the same thing about ‘internet jobs’, or ‘robotics jobs’, or ‘auto jobs’. The experience we have with governments trying to kick-start industries is dismal. The Japanese 5th generation project blew through billions and never produced a product, then got upstaged by a 20 person company in Silicon Valley. Government ‘partnerships’ in semiconductors were a giant waste of money.
And more on point, the first attempt at building ‘green jobs’ has already been done, and it was a colossal failure. Billions have been thrown at ethanol production in the U.S., and billions more have been sucked out of the economy in the form of tariffs and taxes. The result has been an environmental disaster, an economic disaster, and ultimately, a failure.
I guess I’m assuming that if we’re at the point where officials are being appointed to manage the program, someone must have some concrete plans to work from. Can anyone outline something similar to say, NASA’s long-term vision for space exploration? Maybe a timeline showing what investments are going to be made, and for what purpose, and what is hoped to be accomplished with them? With perhaps even some ballpark numbers as to how this might turn a profit and lead to job creation?
Curiously enough, it was a couple of American development programs (Minuteman II guidance system development and the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) which gave birth to the modern computer industry and uniquely positioned the United States to be dominant in it from the 1960s onward, despite the fact that several nations were theoretically more advanced in the application of discrete mathematics and computing technology. Planning for the same thing in the renewable and recoverable energy industries is hardly a pipe dream. As for why the free market isn’t already exploiting it, the fact is that it is; it is one of the most popular areas for venture investment and technology development. However, a stimulus in the form of both research and application support may give the US a considerable edge, just as it enjoyed such an edge from government investment in shipbuilding, rocketry, medicine, and other fields. Whether the proposal advanced by the Obama Administration is worthwhile or just fuzzy belly rubbing I do not know, as I haven’t researched it, but a targeted investment in both research and stimulating applied industry may render a large yield for the population of the United States as a whole and a worthwhile expenditure of tax revenue.
As an aside, I find the way the o.p. is stated to be disingenuous and intellectually offensive. Instead of either explicitly stating a position to be defended or asking for honest debate, it insincerely presents a question in passive-aggressive form accompanied by innuendo and semantic baiting. Surely the o.p. can do better than this.
Stranger
You HAVE to be kidding. All you can read from ‘search inside this book’ is a diatribe about Katrina, the Iraq War, and the gap between rich and poor. That’s it.
Of course, the author is Van Jones, who I should listen to because…why? The guy has a law degree from Yale (which he picked over Harvard because “it didn’t have grades, so I could spend four years being an activist and still graduate”). Why is a lawyer suited to writing a book on a subject that is really about engineering, business, and economics?
If the rest of the content of the book is as substantive as that first chapter, it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on, other than to punch the buttons of fellow travelers. I love the reviewers of the book on the back cover: Tom Daschle, Arianna Huffington, Nancy Pelosi, and Tom Friedman. Who knew they were experts in energy economics and power engineering? But we know it’s a viable economic plan, because “Tavis Smiley, television and radio host” tells us so.
Now, how about pointing me to a book by someone who actually understands the issues involved?
Actually, I found some material myself - I just spent half an hour on the “Green For All” web site. I understand now. This isn’t a path to a newer, better economy. It’s a jobs program. It’s government borrowing or taxing a lot of money, and using it to hire people to do well-paying ‘green collar’ jobs - mostly people from the poor and minority communities. It’s a wealth transfer system masquerading as an economic plan for the future.
In some ways, that’s not a bad thing. If you’re going to give money to the poor and to minorities, you might as well use it to train them in some skills that might be marketable. Just don’t market it as something which will actually improve the economy and lead to higher economic growth and all that.
Oh. Well in that case, why did you initially pretend that you didn’t?
Well, people are investing in it, as, for instance, Wesley’s and Una’s posts and cites made clear. The “green jobs” approach simply favors some government-funded pump-priming to get more investment in it.
AFAICT, the reasons for dissatisfaction with current levels of private investment in “green economy” areas are twofold:
-
In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a bit of an economic slump on now, and investment in general is on the sluggish side. So the government is scoping out places to put some Keynesian deficit spending in order to stimulate the economy.
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There is growing concern about significant negative externalities from anthropogenic climate change through greenhouse gas emissions, which are not likely to be internalized within market transactions soon enough to minimize their environmental impact. So the government is looking for ways to nudge markets towards lower-carbon activities, via “green investment”, tax incentives, etc. etc.
In short, the basic arguments for “green economy” seem to be a combination of seeking environmental benefits, cutting costs through conservation and reuse/recycling, and supporting research and infrastructure development for greater environmental sustainability.
If you want fuller details, why don’t you try reading some of the cites that various posters have linked for you, and come back to debate specific points and assertions concerning them?
I don’t see how you can say that unless you’re completely overlooking the “energy efficiency” aspect of the “green jobs” approach. Clearly, reducing energy use reduces energy costs. (That’s not to claim that some versions of a “green economy” might not involve a net increase in energy costs overall, just pointing out that it’s not true that all “green-jobs” strategies raise energy costs.)
You seem to be arguing that the occurrence of a failure means that nothing of the sort should ever be attempted, and I’m not sure that reasoning holds water. For example, the housing market experienced quite a colossal failure recently, but nobody’s suggesting that we should just stop investing in housing. I think your own ideological views make you inclined to a certain degree of confirmation bias in which markets can do no wrong and governments can do no right.
They can, they have, and they have linked you to various reports on various versions of that long-term vision, which you have apparently seen fit to ignore. Are you actually going to bother reading any of the cites that people go to the trouble of looking up for you? Or are you just going to go on making faux-naive requests for elementary information?
Well, Sam, not everybody is as open-minded and progressive as you are.
I agree it would be nice.
In the first place, if “green-collar job” skills are marketable, that would seem to be a point in favor of green-collar jobs.
In the second place, how do you figure that training poor people in well-paying jobs with marketable skills doesn’t count as “actually improving the economy”? If we have reduced poverty, reduced economic inequality, and more formerly poor people holding down good jobs, that sounds like some substantial improvements to me.
This would be called ‘serendipity’. All technologies produce serendipitous results to some degree. Someone invents a plastic to solve a problem with manfacturing forms, and it turns out to make great skis. A guy makes the first web browser thinking that it will be used for universities to post research papers and such, and it winds up making a an auction system and providing porn to millions. Henry Ford makes the model T, and kicks off everything from drive-in restaraunts and movie houses to the new concept called a ‘teenager’. Stuff happens.
Serendipity cannot be planned. At best, you can use a shotgun, spraying technology all over the place hoping some of it sticks somewhere you never thought of.
Now, I’m not saying that no good can possibly come of this. I’ll even give you a better example than the Minuteman missile - the global GPS system. Centrally planned, it has saved the world far more money than it cost to design and implement. So such things are possible.
I’d just like to see an actual plan. I spent another good part of the evening reading up on more material, including all the cites given, and the best conclusion that I can come up with is that this is 21st century workfare on a huge scale. Most of the cites make no bones about it - they justify the programs in terms of how many minorities and poor people it will employ. And rather than justify it on cost savings, they justify it by saying that the wages paid will be guaranteed to be good, middle class incomes.
The people coming up with the plans I’ve seen are not engineers. They’re not scientists. They’re not economists. They’re activists. There are ‘studies’ written by progressive organizations which contain only scant numbers or facts, and instead speak a lot about social justice.
From the ‘Executive Summary’ of one of the reports of the Apollo Alliance cited earlier:
This is not self-financing. This is not a pathway to a new type of economy. This is 150 billion dollars per year (!!) paid to ‘create jobs’. That’s more than seven times the budget of NASA. Double the budget of the Department of Education. A third of the U.S. military budget.
They then go on to say that this will create a rising tide of new technologies which private companies can exploit, making the economy stronger. This is a bare assertion, however. No actual evidence is provided regarding how this is supposed to happen.
They actually say this:
So… Before this can even work, you need a national ‘living wage’ law, and you need to make it even easier for unions to form. Because we all know, a unionized workforce is the best way to cheaper energy and global competitiveness…
This is just the same old liberal dogma dressed up in new clothes. Wow! We’ve found a problem where the correct solution just HAPPENS to be taxes on the rich, lots of money to the poor an minorities, more unions, and higher minimum wages! If we just do all these things, we’re on the road to a newer, happier, greener economy!
I guess this is the closest thing I could find to an ‘action plan’ that is even remotely specific:
This is already happening, and most of these car companies are at full prodution on hybrids. But there’s no real proof yet that this is the best technology, and I’m not sure spending gobs of money to transition assembly lines over faster than they already are is a very good idea. Hybrid sales are very dependent on oil prices and the economy in general.
Factories already work their asses off to be energy efficient. My company does work in this area. They are pretty close to optimum economic efficiency now, when you consider the costs of capital, downtime, the cost of process re-engineering, etc. If they weren’t, they’d be investing the money themselves. So I not that this one suggests ‘innovative use of the tax code’. In other words, punish 'em until they obey.
Again, very vague. No cost numbers mentioned. Estimates I’ve heard say that making any serious changes to these things will cost a fortune - which is why we’re not doing them already.
I know something about this too. And again, we’re already making appliances that are quite efficient. If there was any low hanging fruit here, we’d already be grabbing it. The problem is that if you want to take, say, a dishwasher and make it more energy efficient, it costs a lot of money. And the cost increases as your desired efficiency goes up.
Carbon sequestration research is fine. But currently, it’s extremely expensive and we really don’t know how to make it much cheaper. Carbon isn’t a trace element like other pollutants - it’s the main result of combustion, and we create a hell of a lot of it. It’s a non-trivial problem to collect and store that much carbon. Certainly there are no ‘green jobs’ for low income workers or any savings to the economy here for a long, long time.
I happen to think the pace of development of renewables is already going pretty strong. This is probably one of the least objectionable items, however, so long as it’s done at a relatively low level.
Yes, yes. More bicycles, buses and trains. Because Americans have repeatedly shown that that’s how they really want to travel. I’ve read a lot of analysis of high-speed rail, and the only corridor in the U.S. where it’s even remotely feasible is New York to Washington. And Maglev? Uh huh.
Rebuilding the inner cities as a ‘green jobs’ project. Because that will encourage everyone to flock back into the city centers they’ve been running away from for fifty years.
There are many problems with a hydrogen infrastructure, and it’s not even remotely clear that this is something we want to do. A few more incremental improvements in batteries, and hydrogen will look like a bad idea.
Right. Because you can’t have a strong, green economy without regulating everyone to death. 'Cause if you leave people alone, they might buy cars and live in the suburbs and not ‘invest’ enough in the things you want their money spent on.
Funny, I could say the same thing about the entire ‘green jobs’ movement.
For the record, I was seriou in the OP. I just didn’t express myself well. I know what a traditional green job might look like, but they way I hear advocates of the ‘green economy’ talk about it, I thought I must be missing something. What triggered this for me was watching the McLaughlin Group, where Eleanor Clift went off about how the recession was going to be fixed by transitioning to a ‘green economy’. I hadn’t paid much attention to the ‘green jobs’ stuff until then, but that made me sit up and go, “wha? How’s it going to do that?”.
And yes, I was and still am skeptical. And I think for good reason.
Yeah, that NEVER happens around here. Especially when people ask questions about George Bush.
But you’re right. I can do better than that. I let my annoyance with the subject get the best of me. Unfortunately, now that I’ve learned more about it, I’m even more annoyed. I didn’t realize just how much of a stalking horse it was for the same old liberal platform.
It seems to me that you desire what is not actually possible, eh?
Come on Stone, I think you’re letting your ideology get in the way of being reasonable:
You are looking for said conclusions I would opine.
If I am, I didn’t have to look very hard. Van Jones is supposed to be the ‘expert’ on this. So much so that the White House hired him to run the whole show. His expertise, from what I can tell, comes from writing “Green Collar Jobs” and founding Green For All. Well, it turns out that his book is nothing more than a political rant - the exerpts available online do nothing but attack the handling of Katrina, the Iraq war, and talk about racism. From the reviews I’ve read, the entire book is like that. And this is supposed to be the clarion call for the movement. This book was also the first cite offered in this thread when I asked how Green Jobs are supposed to actually save the economy.
His organization, Green for All, looks pretty much like an organization set up to push for more unions, higher wages, and hundreds of billions of dollars that will be pushed down into the hands of primarily minority groups. I doubt if the organization employs a single engineer.
At least T-Boone Pickens had numbers behind his proposal. This is nothing but Hot Air and radical politics mixed together.