What do you think about "Cap and Trade" and how will it effect Wyoming? (video, resources)

[ElkHunter]

Interesting new article in tonights Sheridan Press from our Governor. Says that wind energy will never shut down Coal. Say's Obama's flunky was speaking out of line.

[Froggie Legs]

Is this the article you refer to? http://www.thesheridanpress.com/01.pdf (broken link)

Freudenthal says windpower won’t eclipse coal
CHEYENNE (AP) — Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal discounted
this week’s statement by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that wind energy
could replace coal-fired power in the United States as just so much hot air.
Salazar said Monday that wind energy has the potential to replace most
of the coal-generated power in the country.
Speaking at a public hearing in Atlantic City, Salazar said, “The idea
that wind energy has the potential to replace most of our coal-burning
power today is a very real possibility. It is not technology that is pie-in-the
sky; it is here and now.”
A spokesman for Salazar said Monday that the secretary does not
expect wind power to be fully developed, but was speaking of its total
potential if it were.
Freudenthal said Wednesday that the prospect of wind power replacing
coal in the nation’s energy portfolio, “ain’t going to happen.”


I came across this article when I googled Salazar:

Salazar says offshore wind power could substitute 3,000 coal plants

wonder what the feasibility of off shore wind power would be,and where would they put it?

[NVDave]

The feasibility of off-shore wind power (and wave power) is as good as any of the alternative power sources. All it takes is up-front capital at risk and higher consumer power rates to make it pencil in the end. That's what all and any of these alternative schemes need.

Could you get by the EIS and push-back to get the project to go? Well, that's the rub. As I said above, the force called "NIMBY" - Not In My Back Yard - is always what is at play here, unless we're talking about bitter midwesterners, clinging to their Bibles and their guns - well, then the story changes. "How much are you going to pay me? $15K/year/wind tower? OK, you can put one over there, and another one over there, and another one over yonder..."

This is one of the reasons why wind power companies are rushing into the midwest: the residents welcome the economic development. But is the power supplied locally? Well, that's about to become one of the hot issues in these alternative energy schemes with cap and trade. Until now, the states with the goofiest power billing structure (ie, California) has been the most lucrative market for alternative, aka "green" power. There are people in California willing to pay 2X to 3X normal power rates to claim that their house runs on green power. Then there are the RPS - renewable portfolio standards - in some states, which require that the IOU's (investor owned utilities) developed X% of their power from renewables by date Y.

So you see things like Anschutz putting wind projects into Wyoming with the intent of selling the power to California. What does Wyoming get out of that? The wind turbines, transmission lines and their side-effects, andy maybe some of the money spent during construction. That's about it.

Renewables attract Anschutz - The Denver Post

Coal pays a "severance tax" as well as generating significant ongoing economic activity. To my current knowledge, wind power pays no equivalent severance tax. I believe that if we're going to see wind power developed here, and we "bitter clingers" have to put up with the downsides of wind power so that a bunch of Californians can act so smugly superior, then we should tax the power generated for the state fund, or we should use the power for ourselves.

[NVDave]

Originally Posted by Froggie Legs

Salazar says offshore wind power could substitute 3,000 coal plants

He's talking nonsense. As I mentioned above, wind power can offset other power sources, but it cannot provide a "base load" power source until we have a way to store it.

Coal power is "base load" power, as are nukes, natural gas and hydro power. We can schedule it - that's the important thing about base load power. We can look at usage stats for a day that is X warm, and the time of day T, and schedule M megawatts to appear in the grid, then perform minor adjustments as needed.

Solar, wind, wave are not able to be scheduled - you're at the whim of nature, and the ultimate barrier issue is the lack of large-scale storage. If we had some huge hydro dams in the area, we could pump water uphill behind the dam when we have excess wind power, or over-build a solar installation, store energy during the day and release it at night into the grid. Absent big hydro dams, energy storage is a hard problem. Engineers have looked at compressed air, heat, high-speed flywheels, batteries, ultra-capacitors, you name it. All of them have their upsides and downsides, but none of them has achieved the sort of scale necessary at a price point that makes them viable. Storage is a difficult problem even on the small scale of a hybrid automobile.

Geothermal power (such as from the Geysers in CA, or Beowawe in NV) can be baseload power, but only with the sort of geothermal resources in Wyoming that are locked up within Yellowstone NP in our northwest. If I were running the country, I'd wave my magic Executive Order wand and get Yellowstone unlocked. There's few alternative power sources that are as viable as geothermal. Even then, the Geysers project in CA has proven that geothermal isn't an inexhaustible source of power. It is possible to pull enough heat out of the deep wells to cause cooling of the heat source over a couple decades. Believe it or not.

To quote Robert Heinlein, "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" - or to paraphrase the first law of thermodynamics, "You will never win." (the second law, BTW, is: "And you won't break even, either.")

When it comes to alternative power, every hippy who has hooked up some solar cells or a windmill in his/her backyard, spun their meter backwards and yelled "Yea! We're stickin' it to the man!" thinks they're an EE.

Until they want to go big-time. Then they find out that there's a little more to this power stuff than just making a light bulb glow...

[NVDave]

Originally Posted by Froggie Legs

" Mr. Chu has called for gradually ramping up gasoline taxes over 15 years to coax consumers into buying more-efficient cars and living in neighborhoods closer to work. "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," Mr. Chu, who directs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in September."

Well, if they want to do that, then they need to understand the consequences. One of the reasons we're in a recession is that the US economy has gone into recession every time there is a "shock" rise in oil-derived energy prices. Like it or not, the US economy is tied to cheap energy. Make the energy expensive, and the US economy slows down and goes into recession. This time, the recession is complicated by a debt deflation and the attending implosion of the financial sector.

[ElkHunter]

Getting a little out of whack here. Let's get back on track of how Cap and Trade effects Wyoming.

[sunsprit]

Follow the Bill released out of committee by Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy Committee ... where he's calling for a 20% reduction of carbon emissions in the next few years. That's a far more aggressive schedule than had been previously called for by global warming supporters, and a far greater reduction than proposed by the Europeans with their cap and trade system in place right now.

Interestingly, the Europeans ... with their cap and trade system ... have accomplished less reduction in their carbon emissions over the past few years than the USA without a cap and trade system. Further, the auction system creates an atmosphere of uncertainty as to costs for the European companies that must buy the credits, where the monthly trading price has fluctuated by as much as 17% due to speculators in the market bidding it up. So far, all it's been is an expense to the businesses and consumers to the benefit of the traders.

This was reported by William O'Keefe in U.S. News and World Report, 4/13/09 ... hardly a venue which is unfriendly to the administration. The details of the report indicated that the result of this bill would be a huge tax burden on lower and middle income earners ... and create an income boom for a select few. O'Keefe mentioned that Enron had been a big supporter of cap and trade as a means to bring in yet additional revenue for their business. Link on from the Drudge Report at this time.

So, for those doubting that the administration is working on this cap and trade program to affect energy production and costs ... there's strong evidence that Carol Browner's meetings with congressional leaders has resulted in fast tracking for this devastation to the energy industry and our economy.

[NVDave]

OK, focusing like a laser on how cap-n-trade will hit WY:

I've mentioned the coal production side. Let's put that aside, and deal with the first and most widespread impact in Wyoming, our power prices.

Wyoming generates the vast majority of our power from coal. Here's a link to the EIA information by state on coal-fired power production:

Electric Power Monthly - Net Generation from Coal by State by Sector

4,050K MWh of power generated in December, 2008 in Wyoming from coal.

OK, so how much power do we generate from ALL sources in WY?

Electric Power Monthly - Net Generation by State by Sector

Answer: 4,347K MWh.

Allow me to whip out my trusty HP-41cv... 93% of our power in Wyoming comes from coal.

What about wind? That would be under "other renewables" -- and comes to 156 MWh as of Dec 2008. Oil, natural gas and "other gas" are all in the tens of MWh's for 2008.

So how much coal did we burn for our electric power?

Electric Power Monthly - Receipts of Coal Delivered for Electricity Generation by State

2,430,000 tons, or 2.43 million tons. (these would be "short tons" or 2,000 lbs per ton). Cost per ton is so low that our power plants want the information withheld, because it reflects a) how much our local coal mines' "mine mouth" prices are, and they want to report aggregate prices, not give away individual mines' prices to local power generators.

In other words, the EIA reports carefully withhold coal prices for Wyoming power plants so as to not give away what a sweetheart deal our local power plants are getting, thereby keeping other states paying higher prices for our coal, which results in nice, fat state tax revenues, etc.

OK, so let's bottom-line this: What are we paying, on average, for power in Wyoming?

Electric Power Monthly - Average Retail Price of Electricity to Ultimate Customers by End-Use Sector, by State

Bottom line: we're well above average (US-wide is about 50% of all power comes from coal) in the proportion of our power that comes from coal, and far, far above the coal usage proportion for coastal states (ie, where pretty-people environmentalists live) where they have nuclear reactor-based power as well as more natural gas fired capacity.

Our state's power consumers are almost completely dependent upon not only coal, but cheap coal, for our cheaper-than-average power prices.

Under cap-n-trade, our power prices will be going up - substantially.

Call Morty and make book on it.

[NorthPoleMarathoner]

Here is a link to an article about climate change and cap and trade.

Rattle That Regulatory Saber by Floy Lilley

[Froggie Legs]

Just putting this in for information.

"McCain Slams Obama Cap-and-Trade Climate Change Proposal"
McCain Slams Obama Cap-and-Trade Climate Change Proposal - First 100 Days of Presidency - Politics FOXNews.com (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/04/21/mccain-slams-obama-cap-trade-climate-change-proposal/ - broken link)