Becoming highly dependent on these unstable regions for gas, just like we are for oil now, will greatly harm the US geopolitical position, as well as its balance of trade. It will make resource wars (e.g., Iraq) much more likely. Gas baseload plants also make no sense from a resource management point of view, in that they consume large amounts of a precious, limited resource, for a task that can easily be performed using several fuels/sources that are domestic, and much more abundant. California, with it's defacto "all gas" policy, has one of the most irresponsible energy policies in the nation.

All that said, if the author (and his ilk) wan't to be taken seriously, they have to show a little more willingness to compromise. One of the most irresponsible things that "environmentalists" have done, and continue to do, is spread the dishonest mantra that conservation and renewables alone can meet all of our future energy needs. No serious energy expert has ever believed this. As they contunue to beat this drum, w/o any hint of compromise, most people have stopped even listening to them, as they don't offer any real solutions. The fact is, if we limit our alternative options to conservation and renewables only, the use of gas for power generation in California WILL continue to increase, making LNG necessary.

Our primary goals should be to greatly reduce the use of gas for baseload power generation (for the reasons given above), and to greatly reduce the use of conventional (non-IGCC) coal, due to its unacceptable environmental and health costs. If we are to have any chance of doing this, we are going to need a much larger tent. Due to their intermittantcy, renewables can not do the job alone. Not even close. There seems to be a growing concensus (among those capable of compromise) that a combination of clean (IGCC) coal, nuclear, and renewables, as well as conservation, is going to be required to get the job done.

Full scale experiments, while very costly, are nevertheless extremely convincing.

"In California, about half of our power plants use natural gas to generate electricity – which can be generated by other energy sources, such as wind and solar power, .... "

You can? Than why is it that you are NOT doing this? I have seen the same statement, or similar claims, for thirty years. Yet, the reality is that the folks in California can not find it in their interest to actually generate electricity in any significant amount, by these methods. None of these methods have provided enough capacity to accomodate the GROWTH of the power needs of the state, let alone REPLACE any thermal generation capacity.

I don't understand why this is. California, by their own admission, has the brightest, most beautiful, nost creative perople in the world. Yet, all they create is dreams, wishes, fantasies when it comes to generating power.

Go ahead . Protest to your hearts content. Keep offering up fanciful solutions. Such proposals serve you well.

chuck petterson persia

How much more will you need to "pay" the incumbents to achieve these goal of eliminating natural gas? From here it looks like a very lucrative flim-flam game they've got going with you. I'd suggest extreme caution in listening to any further proposals of this sort.

I note in Recommendation #5 of the ACEEE (American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy) report at http://www.aceee.org/conf/03ee/Kushler-7w.pdf the wording

"The traditional structure for the evaluation of utility energy efficiency programs should be maintained, including ......... (4) an open process, with full public access to all reports"

They then require a $13.00 fee to download any of their reports.

What I'm particularly interested in is "How to the program decision-makers avoid the liklyhood of design engineers designing new projects with an object of benefiting from this sort of program?" The ways to do so are endless, such as building a new manufacturing facility with all cheap inefficient electric motors to start, then having the efficiency program pay to replace those motors with new and costly high-efficiency motors while moving the nearly-new low-effic. motors onto phase 2 of the project. DO and repeat, while taxpayers foot the bill.

An interesting problem in economics and incentive.

I will, however, state now that I do indeed believe renewables and energy efficiency can replace all of our electricity generation in California - AND all of our natural gas needs (for non-electricity generation purposes) AND all of our transportation fuel needs. Indeed, this is our regional goal with our Fossil Free By '33 program (www.fossilfreeby33.org).

If you'd like extensive documentation, and real world examples, to back up this admittedly non-mainstream claim, I welcome further dialogue. You can email me directly at thunt@cecmail.org.

California is not already producing 33% renewable electricity b/c of many reasons, some of which are admittedly technological and economic in nature. These barriers have largely been overcome now and it's simply a matter of time before the political and industry barriers to a large increase in renewable generation takes us to the existing state goals, and hopefully much further.

A far smarter use of limited resources (capital)

I am also opposed to the misguided use of natural gas for baseload electric power as are others commenting on this column. It is a thermodynamically wasteful use of fuel. In domestic heating or in chemical processes, 90% of the natural gas energy is extracted for beneficial use. In gas turbines, it is less than half of that value. This wasteful use of natural gas for baseload electric power is the reason that domestic heating users have seen a threefold increase in gas rates over the last 3 to 4 years! It is also the reason many chemical companies depending on natural gas for their feedstock have moved their manufacturing to other countries. Thus, the misguided use of natural gas has caused the heating bills to increase while jobs disappear! Logical? No.

I make note that "renewables" as discussed by Mr. Hunt have an interesting attribute. The solar renewable source operates about 50% of the time under the best of sunny conditions. The other half of the time it is dark. Maybe renewable is a synonym for "restartable" since solar power systems must be restarted on a daily basis. Note also that the land use to generate power from solar renewables will not be from land around Santa Barbara where Tam Hunt lives, it will be from eastern California deserts where smaller populations of people with less political power live. Is this NIMBY or what?

The other renewable energy he discusses, wind, also has interesting attributes. A couple of weeks ago, I drove the I10 interstate from the Ontario, CA airport to Palm Springs. Between these points is a mountain pass where the largest installation of wind machines I have ever seen is located. The fields of machines stretch for miles along the interstate and on mountain ridges within sight of the interstate. There must be several thousand machines. During this drive, the wind was blowing particularly aggressively from the east, enough so, that it was the subject of the local news every time I bothered to listen. Nevertheless, a large number of the wind machines sat motionless! Thus, better performance reliability is clearly needed.

Now to further observe, that since no one controls the wind, this renewable energy source is also not dependable. During hot summer days when air conditioning is badly needed in inland California communities, often the wind does not blow. So where does the power come from then? Natural gas turbines with the adverse social and economic effects illustrated above.

Mr. Hunt needs to face the reality that in this country, either everyone moves to Santa Barbara and similar coastal communities where the effects of winter and summer extremes are damped, or we go to more conventional and RELIABLE sources for generating electric power that do not depend on imported energy supplies. Jim Hopf made the right suggestions for satisfying this reliability need.

There is one renewable source of energy that California can use but many of the environmental extremists groups oppose it. That is waste. The municipal solid waste (trash) generated in California could be converted into electricity or hydrogen using gasification technologies. According to a California Integrated Waste Management Board 2004 report, about 40 million tons/year of waste are generated in the state. Most of this ends up in landfills where greenhouse gas generation and groundwater pollution are known outcomes. If this waste is processed in a gasification process, the gross power available is in the range of 42,000 gigawatt hours. So, the natural gas shortfall can be largely made up using gasification technologies to process the waste resource now being wasted. And, lest I not address the subject, this process can operated with minimal air emissions -- contrary to what the ill-informed anti-everything community generally claims.

So California does have indigenous energy options, it just needs to use the intellectual power of the state to implement those solutions instead of always advancing the NIMBY responses to energy options.

However, your assertion that all possible energy efficiency measures could be obtained simply through advanced metering is incorrect. There are many additional measures, such as demand response (shutting off power to volunteer customers during high summer peak demand, for one example), educational programs, retrofits for insulation, etc., that will not be impacted directly by advanced meters.

1) Solar intermittency is readily soluble with CSP technologies. Solar Two (not operating anymore) used a molten salt storage system that allowed it to operate continuously for a week, day and night. The still operating SEGS by Barstow have natural gas backup generators, which produce about 10% of their power, allowing full dispatchability to Edison, the purchaser. For wind, geographic dispersion acts as a natural balancer and other solutions such as pumped hydro storage, compressed air energy storage, and hydrogen storage are either being done already or are being perfected.

2) We are in fact propsing construction of many GW of renewable capacity in our region b/c a large part of our program is to create a sustainable local economy. If we outsource to the desert for our power needs, we're not localized. We'll certainly have some opposition, but we hope the magnitude of our problems stemming from our existing power mix will help convince others that we need to get serious about own backyard.

The great majority of experts don't see renewables making up more than a small percentage of the INCREASE in power demand (which is what I had said earlier, just to be clear). Instead, what we see is converntional (dirty, non-IGCC) coal making up the great majority of new generation. Given how things are going, it is the height of hubris to proclaim that renewables can do it all, and that good but not perfect options like clean (IGCC) coal and nuclear should not be built. Keep in mind that wind and solar only account for a fraction of one percent of US generation. With this little accomplished so far, you do not bet the farm on these sources completely and miraculously succeeding. You do give them ample support, however.

Even the American Wind Power Association understands the limitation on wind's overall potential, due to the intermittantcy issue. Their optimistic goal (i.e., wish list) is for wind to eventually provide ~15% of our power (perhaps by ~2020, or later). Even if this optimistic goal is achieved, it will be more than offset by the increase in demand.

Despite our differences about predictions of wind's potential and future economics, we may be able to agree on policy. The main policy failure nowadays is that external costs for fossil fuels are not considered in their price (and they are held to much lower standards in terms of allowable public health risk). There is also no disincentive for using energy from unstable foreign sources. I think we should do the following, and Tam may agree:

1. US LNG terminals should be blocked. If one really believes that unavoidable, non-power gas needs makes them necessary anyway, then they should be allowed only in conjunction with reinstatement of the Fuel Use Act (banning the use of gas for baseload power plants).

2. Either IGCC should be required for all new coal plants, or there should be regulations requiring dramatic reductions in pollution (or massive pollution taxes to reflect coal's external costs).

3. CO2 emissions should be capped or taxed, such that they will steadily and significantly decrease over the next few decades.

After all, the issues addressed by the policies above are the REAL issues. Once policies are in place to reflect these issues (like the ones above) the market should be left to decide how best to proceed. If renewables are as capable and economical as Tam suggests, then he should have nothing to fear, as they will win the overwhelming majority of market share. Why wouldn't a utility choose renewables? It's by far the most popular choice.

The one thing we don't need is for other legitimate sources like clean coal or nuclear being politically stonewalled (i.e., not being given the chance to compete) by a public that has been convinced by snake oil salesmen that they are unnecessary because renewables will be able to (economically) provide everything.

I have observed the promises of the environmentalist systematically fail to deliver for over 35 years. The anti-nukes have used every scare tactic in the book to prevent the building of new plants.

The "waste issue" is really a non-issue.

With fuel reprocessing and use of mixed oxide fuel - the total waste produced by all operating plants could be stored on a single football size field - and the waste would be no more radioactive than the original ore after a period of around 900 years.

As far as the need to drill off-shore - until the automobile is eliminated - the US has but two choices: Drill for domestic supplies or continue to get our oil from from imports.

Johnny Williams

One concern, however, of a carbon focused energy procurement system is the potential for nuclear power to squeak in. Some scholars believe nuclear power, when the full mining to production cycle is considered, produces 20-40% of the emissions of a modern natural gas plant, and with lower grade ores up to 100%. Even if they're wrong in their analysis, the nuclear waste and terrorism concerns surrounding nuclear power make it highly unattractive as a power source. I would also note that the Palo Verde plant, the US's largest nuke, at 4 GW, has been very unreliable the last two years, shutting down numerous times for up to a week.

As for the potential of renewables, in general, to meet significant amounts of US demand, time will tell. Cellulosic ethanol, plug-in hybrids, wind power, biomass, (concentrating) solar, and ocean power, have tremendous potential. Check out the Western Governors Association website for a number of reports on the potential of these sources in the western states.

California has enjoyed domestically produced gas from other states, Alaska oil and now the time has arrived for California to contribute to the national interest. Assessing the need for LNG terminals based ONLY on California needs appears selfish and screams "not in my back yard". This is particularly true considering LNG is a very clean fuel that cannot foul beaches.

Safety is an issue, but even Boston sees fit to import LNG and they accomodate the ship traffic in a safe manner.

California can develop all the renewables possible, but California also needs to re-join the United States.

Bruce Gerhold

Does the PUC's procurement system apply only to coal plants built in CA, or does it also apply to coal plants built in nearby states that would supply CA? Recently, this "loophole" has been exploited alot, with no coal plants existing in CA, but CA importing a lot of its power from coal plants in other Western states.

To be brief, I'm ready to believe that CA's current (and near future) policies may effectively remove coal from consideration, but I'm not inclined to believe it will do anything to halt the growth (let alone decrease) in CA gas use for power generation. Hence the push for LNG. You'd think that a limit on power sector CO2 emissions (which is being discussed) would effectively require a reduction in gas use, given that CA already doesn't use coal. All I can say is, if such a policy truly would require such a reduction, it will be dropped, or circumvented somehow, because I don't see CA taking the steps necessary to actually reduce power-sector gas use (build nukes, that is) anytime soon.

Concerning nuclear, your statement on how "letting nuclear squeak in" would constitute a problem with an otherwise rational policy is the very type of prejudiced thinking that makes it so important to have objective, merit-based policies (like the ones I gave above), as opposed to politically/popularity-based policies like renewable portfolio standards. I, for the life of me, can't understand how an ample, long-term, reliable, domestic energy source that has never had any measurable impact on public health or the environment could be considered "undesireable".

Even considering all the issues you mentioned, there has been complete scientific consensus for some time now that the overall external costs (i.e., public health and environmental risks/costs) of nuclear power are negligible compared to those of fossil fuels (especially coal and oil). The most recent, and rigorous scientific estimates of external costs for various energy sources (expressed as a monetary cost, per kW-hr) shows nuclear's external costs to be ~0.25-0.5 cents/kW-hr, compared to over 1 cent/kW-hr for gas and ~3-8 cents/kW-hr for coal and oil (for most nations). External costs for biomass were higher than nuclear. Solar was similar (slightly lower) and wind was lower. A summary of this study are shown on page 37 of:

http://www.nea.fr/html/ndd/reports/2003/nea4372-generation.pdf

In terms of nuclear's CO2 emissions, the agenda-driven "studies" you reference don't have an ounce of credibility. The great majority of reputable studies show that the entire nuclear power production process have very small net CO2 emissions, about ~2% that of coal, or ~5% that of gas. One such study is at:

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull422/article4.pdf

Running out of uranium ore, even high grade ore, is simply not an issue, as I discuss at:

http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/uranium.html

And besides, if the nuclear production process had significant net CO2 emissions, what should yuo be afraid of. Any system that limits or taxes CO2 emissions would (theoretically) increase the costs of nuclear fuel production or plant construction (or whatever) and it would show up in nuclear's power price anyway. That's the thing about these elegant, merit-based policies..... And yet, I've never spoken to a nuclea advocate who was at all afraid of this "potential issue". Co2 limits were never viewed as anything but a boon.

One final thing, concerning reliability. Nuclear power plants have a capacity factor of ~90%, the highest of any type of power generation. No issue there. Renewables, on the other hand, are the least reliable. How can you raise this as an argument against nuclear and for renewables??!!

--- Graham Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Boron: fire with nuclear cachet

Although the report mentions possible energy shortages, the word "depletion" does not appear anywhere in the Executive Summary. Was that omission deliberate? Was it done because due consideration for the issues of depletion would force a substantial change in environmentalist theology? Does that mean California's liberal legislature continues to base its energy policy on a politically correct, but totally unrealistic, assessment of the real world? May I suggest you read the essays on Martis Valley, Energy and Government Energy Policy at www.tce.name, and then follow the WEB site links for additional perspectives on what is happening in the real world. You should also buy my book "Oil, Jihad and Destiny" for an economist's view of depletion. Then, when you understand the challenges that lie ahead,

NB: The article also stresses how important in this process is "liberalization of the energy markets in France", because no private company could afford the risk of building new reactors in France, and therefore will instead build crowds of small wind generation "as in Spain".

What a joke. And the Lord Said "Let there be no nuclear, LNG or IGCC coal." and the installers and sellers of photocells and wind turbines were exceedingly pleased.

The notion in the paper that “concentration of Btu’s” is problematic on its face is abjectly preposterous. I would wager that Mr. Hunt drives an automobile (or would recognize a photo of one at a single glance). In the fuel tank of that automobile, there is a sufficient number of Btus to levitate that automoble many feet into the sky. Right in Mr. Hunt’s own gasoline tank is a more concentrated Btu source than LNG. If highly concentrated Btus per unit volume were a problem, Mr. Hunt would be petrified to use nuclear fuel, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, electricity, and coal, all of which are more concentrated than LNG. Mr. Hunt is diametrically wrong; concentrated Btu's are low cost Btus because there are huge economies of scale from such concentration.

I personally think that we should not import LNG, but I find it a necessary evil for the short term. I really hate upgrading an infrastructure (NG) that will be eventually torn down at some level. Too many people think that it's good policy to simply use up one resource until it's too expensive (peak oil worries) and move on to deplete another (NG). Haven't we learned anything from doing that? How high do NG prices have to get to before we switch to clean coal. Then what's next? I believe, instead, in moderation and mixing. What's wrong with a steady increase in renewables with each weighted according to their total benefits (market driven). During this time maintain the status quo with an economically safe slant towards cleaner, safer & more efficient generation in the hopes of renewables & conservation consistantly taking over increasing sized chunks. Yes, I'm being vague in percentages here, because they don't matter as much as just maximizing progress toward the goal. If that goal is not coming fast enough, then nuclear should be used to make up the difference. The problems with nuclear are most definitely NOT a non-issue. The public may not like it because of only incorrect quoted statistics, but the fact remains that they are, like everything else, ran by humans. TMI was more of an accident because of egos hiding problems in the beginnings of an event. When the pressure of "the future of all nukes" rides on a safety record, as it will, how will that affect a similar scenerio. Let's all face up to the fact that nuclear is not the perfect solution that some say. It is, however, our best one on a purely technical basis right now.

To those that say efficiency/conservation & renewables can't provide a very high portion of our needs, I can say that I've ran across an incredible amount of new technologies recently that show promise. So many in fact, that space doesn't even allow me to list the categories, let alone the individuals. Some are geared to small utility or plant scale while others are for residential. Some will work, others will not. Some have expensive storage (as electricity) while others have extremely cheap (solar thermal) potential. And just like anything else, you can make anything as reliable as you want to pay for and unlike the 70's, we now have all the conditions ripe for their advance. When each of these becomes commercially available AND cost beneficial, consumers will shift to demanding them. To see how that could grow, just think of some other consumer product of comparable gain/cost. How fast is any given Hybrid auto line ramping up? Project that across a couple dozen residential renewable products and see what you get. ...even if they only save a couple hundred kWh/month each. Of the ones I regularly follow, their problem is not as much technical or usually even cost competitiveness, but rather perception and investor issues. but I've ranted in that direction too often.

I think it is the 'height of hubris' to judge the future of renewables or any form of power, as not worth betting on based on current capacity. Maybe a better comparison would be to project their growth year-over-year and figure that as a percentage of the mix. Any industry in it's infancy would fail the prior comparison. :( What percentage does clean coal now produce? As optimistic as I am, my '05 predictions were surprisingly underestimated.

I commend Mr. Hunt on his article and optimism and effort. I think that all we can do is change public perception to provide more support (investment & policy) for ou

On the hopeful side, most everyday Californians are much more clear-eyed and reasonable about our energy issues. Even aging hippies in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood are reportedly open to more nuclear power.

This conflict between public political correctness about energy and voter realism makes the state's politics "metastable." When the reality becomes undeniable, as in did in 2001, visible and accountable advocates of positions like Mr. Hunt's will suffer the political backlash. I have little hope that our leadership will have the foresight and courage to prevent the inevitiable crisis that these daydreams will produce.

I share the misgivings about building LNG terminals and our becoming increasing dependent on overseas energy supplies but I recognize that in the intermediate term (5 to 20 years) the state will need them. I think that represents mainstream, if still silent, public opinion in the state of California.

Mr. Hunt's positions are increasingly considered unworkable and ill-conceived.

"You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time." Abraham Lincoln.

I would prefer if this were do-able with an accurate "Externalities Levy" rather than a subsidy, but realize that powerful entrenched interests will never allow that so am resigned to the subsidy approach.

--- Graham Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Boron: fire with nuclear cachet

I do read into his writing a little acceptance that LNG might need to be used in smaller doses. He mentions two port's issues but states the third one is significantly worse due to it's location. It's almost like saying, "if you have to, then just don't use the third location."

Somsel really makes me wonder what act of God it would take for his kind to accept a totally clean and cheap renewable energy source as an equal. Would they agree it's better than nukes only after we've flipped off the last fossil fuel / nuclear plant? I especially got a chuckle out of unsubstantiated "reports" of aged San Francisco based hippies being "open" to nuclear. How much? Were they given a the facts or a choice? Who reported this? Who cared enough to take notes? Very significant indeed coming from a group stating incorrect or a lack of facts to base a decision on. Exactly where is the line that we need to cross for them to stop attributing the renewable movement as being agenda/political driven and related to 'fooling some of the people'? It has gotten so tiresome, that it has nearly convinced me to stop reading the instant I see any nuclear support. ....regardless of the author. How many others out there also turn off the nuke talk? Talk about beating the drum.

"You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time." Abraham Lincoln.

The problem is that of "moral free riders." Mr. Hunt, Mr. McKissick and the like can advocate the nonsensical, the unproven, and the uneconomical because they are personally not accountable. If wrong, they pay no priice for the follies they advocate. They seem to delight in wasting other peoples' money to purchase their own delusionary sense of moral and intellectual superiority.

For those of us to whom the public looks to deliver affordable electricity 365/24, the problem is one of high gravity and personal responsibility. When I worked for the local utility, the neighbors repeatedly asked ME why the lights went out or why their bills were so high.

Five or ten years from now, are people going to ask Mr. Hunt why their homes are cold, their houses dark, and their jobs shuttered? He'll be long gone to the next pipe dream, the next "cause de jure." I'll stop advocating nuclear power when I'm assured that my grandchildren will have enough power to live prosperous, healthy lives.

As to the source of the opinions of San Francisco residents, a close relative was a candidate for supervisor in San Francisco in the last election and had extensive contact with voters in his district which included the Haight-Ashbury. When he discussed energy problems with his fellow citizens in private and at public forums, he was shocked and surprised at the broad interest in new nuclear power, even amongst those one would at first glance would assume to be anti-nuclear, ie aging hippies. It was not unanimous and seldom enthusiatic, of course. He was not pushing nuclear, either. Political aspirants work hard at understanding the views of their constituants. His experiences mirror mine in other parts of the state and those polls taken by NEI.

I'll stand by my assessment of the metastable nature of the issue in this state.

Of the specific LNG terminals proposed in this state, the one in Long Beach Harbor does not appear to be a wise location. The one using the old oil platform off Malibu is much more sensible and should be pursued.

It is true however that not much has made it to commercialization since then, but there are some considerations that you may not be aware of regarding that. I'll use my situation as an example. Only after I saw it as a viable opportunity, did I start work on my own system around 1999. Working alone and under a strained budget, I made slow progress. It takes time to relearn thermodynamics, CAD and materials, etc. Once I partnered with a professional engineer last year, I found that it went faster but was still limited to my budget. With no proof of concept and public opinion such as yours available everywhere, financing was tough. Prototyping has also presented it's share of the delays with scheduling donated machine time and everything needing NDAs, etc. As you can see, it's not a job for the person who doesn't live, eat and sleep it. There are many such companies doing the exact same thing, each at varying stages, all racing toward commercialization. Some have made it to market like the solar dishes that just got the contract for 1/2 a gW + recently. Some have proven success but the managers that came along with their financing decided which direction to take their future. Be all that as it may, it won't be long before I'll be able to cite many more large scale examples comparable to SEGS. None of this even considers the other disciplines like peak shaving residential generation or wave / tidal / wind / Bio / PV / thermal Hydrogen / geothermal or even any conservation options. Keep in mind that none of these have to produce baseload or even dispatchable power to reduce the addiction to LNG/oil. They only have to offset oil or gas use by being predictable or able to be stored or backed up. With any fuel saved, we surely can use some of it as backup.

As far as having a stake in this, I submit to you that I have much more than you do. I also work my day job at a utility plant and have to answer for when the service dies. I will add that the services we provide have a much lower reliability that any system I would ever release. On top of that, emission permitting has made dirtier fuels more cost effective than the cleaner natural gas. So, yes if you couple that job with the endless after hours private work, the personal debt and committments I've accumulated to start out on my own, I'd say I have quite a bit on the line. At this stage, it's do or die but we're not worried at all.

What's your answer to your neighbors going to be in 5-10 years when you've spent billions to shore up the NG/LNG market and China or India outbids us, and our prices have skyrocketed higher than now? My answer and that of the others working toward renewables will be that I reduced our need by X% and that % is growing rapidly. I ask you why you can't see both options as a goal? No one's saying to dump all fossil fuel plants and replace them. We're just wanting guys like you to stop knocking renewable as nonsensical, unproven, uneconomical pipe dreams not worth funding, so we can get off the ground.

Don't worry, I feel totally comfortable that whatever fossil fuel plants (including nukes/ports/pipelines, etc.) that are reguired to keep the lights on, will still get their funding and get built along the way. Opportunity breeds competition, right?

My answer - why didn't we build lots of nukes back when and how come you don't have a ground source heat pump and maybe a domestic solar hot water system? That's my energy prescription.

The terminals and deliver chains to the existing pipeline system are being privately financed. I'll allow Wall Street to decide whether to invest in such endeavors and how long they think they need to amortize them to make a profit..

We agree that the global LNG market will have a comparably short run, maybe 20 to 50 years. Resources are thin and demand is great. Competing uses such as GTL will also limit. We also share a disdain for pollution but I've chosen nuclear as the replacement path while you're placing your bets elsewhere.

Frankly, investors in green energy are dependent on future corporate welfare in the form of mandated purchase requirements and tax incentives. Plus, they anticipate future governmental and legal frustration of cheaper competitors, ie nuclear. Certainly there are and will

Nuclear only needs government to promise to get out and stay out of the way. Regulatory and political risks are the main deterrents to a rapid expansion of domestic nuclear capacity.

As to fuel savings, what about capital wasting? One has to ask, where can our capital investments for energy best be sunk? There is a huge need and only a limited amount of capital. Government distortions of investment decisions will only lead to waste.

If this is the case, please tell me why $6 billion in subsidies for nuclear power was included in the 2005 EPAct, about half of the total subsidies for all energy sources?

The fact is, nuclear power in the US has been incredibly expensive, especially so in California, where ratepayers are still on the hook for the high costs from San Onofre and Diablo Canyon.

When a unit at DCNPP and a unit at SONGS went off line during the California electric energy crisis, the price of a Kw-hr of electric energy in California went up. This appears true even when the shenanigans of fast-buck artists manipulating the electric energy market are discounted. Perhaps those allocating R & D funding at the national level noticed this phenomena. If 20 year operating license extensions are granted to DCNPP and SONGS, the worn-out anti-nuke mantra of these plants costing ratepayers an arm and a leg will be even more ludicrous. This even after the capital cost of replacing steam generators! Mr. Somsel pinned the tail on you and Todd pretty well. Your contributions to conservation and the electric energy mix, should they make economic sense, should be welcome. Your political and anti-nuclear activism should be ignored.

Don Giegler

Mr. Giegler, what does it prove to say that taking some nuclear generation offline during an energy crunch will or did cause a price rise? I don't care if you took pedal power offline, x amount off will result in y price rise. How exactly does this support your case?

If you're going to complain that you're tired of the anti-nuke mantra, then give us something different back. All we hear is pro-nuke and there's nothing else worth spending a dime on unless it's already cost effective! How much is in next year's budget for nuclear vs. solar research? Try Billions vs. 150 million. So stop complaining about spending so much on renewables because after 50 years, you're still getting 10 times our amount. That just boggles my mind. I also get tired of being referred to as anti-nuclear just for asking some tough financial questions of it. Maybe you could tell me how it costs you anything for me to build a privately funded solar plant that uses no foreign or domestic fuel, doesn't pollute and has high reliability/capacity? It just takes time, nothing gets cost effective right out of the gate. Even so, I do get tired of repeating to deaf ears that there currently are solar thermal solutions that compete with nuclear plants on all acounts except scale right now. You should look into this before you tout that we only need nuclear. As you may have read above, I said nuclear is currently the most technically feasable option right now.

Professor (of economics) Banks, how many decades of cutting edge advancement in renewables are you going to ignore before backing up your repeated discounting of renewables? I'm guessing you're in the crowd of when it's perfected, then I'll take my fingers out of my ears.

I would love to see the government get completely out of the energy business. I have never seen any organization that can spend so much to accomplish so little. I truly believe that private investment looks to the accomplishments of the government research as an indicator of which renewables are worth their salt. Unfortunately, the government labs only contain professional researchers with no accountability and a tendency to support mostly pie in the sky dreams. This doesn't fly in the private sector where the end goal is #1.

However I'm also completely convinced that fairly soon solar/biofuel is going to make more sense economically. Seen the article re- Iogen / Shell in Europe?

Perhaps you do understand when you admit "...nothing gets cost effective right out of the gate..." . If so, we can avoid wasting time answering questions for which the answers are obvious. The R & D funding that incenses you, from the descriptions that I've read, appears to be for thermal splittlng of hydrogen-rich compounds and resuming investigation of improved spent fuel reprocessing technology, so precipitously terminated by that eminent nuclear engineer, Jimmy Who, in the late '70s.

Don

What I am incessant on is the constant and unjustified attitude that a) all renewables are toys and can't possibly compete economically, b) all renewables are created equal, c) they are a waste of money, d) they can't supply enough to make a difference, and e) they are distracting from getting down to business of shoring up fuel source x, y, or z. That really gets my goat when it comes from people who have gotten subsidies for 50 years with their own set of promises and their own guarantees of eutopia. I have fought this attitude for so long, I'm sick of it. It is unjustified, arrogant and immature. Unfortunately, those accusations don't stick to the nuclear crowd. Only through the current fossil fuel crisis are they starting to stick to that group. If was was to say that nuclear was a joke and not worth spending a dime on (let alone pulling ALL the subsidies) I would be laughed out of here. No I don't feel that way, but I'm trying to show the inequality of competition.

As far as my personal support. I tend to support all renewables if they are clean, truly renewable and provide sufficient reliable capacity. That quickly narrows the field to only solar thermal to electric generation with a CHP adder. I believe the only way to do that is via Stirling engine. I researched that engine and found that all the 'experts' give way to some "magic" at some point in the process explaination so I spent nearly a decade learning the most basic level of physics going on. This led me to see opportunities that are being missed in today's offerings. This led to a new design, to prototyping, to funding hunting, to legislative research, to online "due dilligence" support for investors, and finally to fighting popular opinion against the viability of Stirlings. Now maybe you can see how the casual dismissal of alternative technologies in public can have a profound impact on their development. ...and I'm not asking for any subsidy or help in any way from any government entity. Anyone designing a long term business around short term subsidies, credits, policies or fuel volitility has their hydrocarbons and carbohydrates confused. ;)

How's that for the nutshell version. If you would like to continue this conversation on the side, you can email mckissick@gmail.com

Who knows. Perhaps there is some intent to produce electric energy, obtain hydrogen and sequester carbon simultaneously. I take it natural gas isn't the only hydrogen-rich compound, but it will do for a start. As Dr. Banks puts it, "many moons ago" we learned that LH2 and LOX had a helluva specific impulse, much to the detriment of certain engine test stands when things went wrong. The squeal of the pig is there. Can we use it? On one thing we may agree; it's getting harder and harder these days to tell the difference between legitimate R & D funding and political payoffs. Maybe that's the penalty you and I pay for living in two countries with representative forms of government elected by the people. The people, by the way, who are the corporations, the companies, the small businesses and the public servants.

Todd:

"Unfortunately, those accusations don't stick to the nuclear crowd." is probably less clear to me than what I've addressed to you is to you. Though I support Mr. Somsel's and Dr. Bank's assessments of the renewers and the conservers, may the gods of optimality smile on both groups.

Don

http://www.eskom.co.za/live/content.php?Item_ID=702

"This means a 60-W panel would cost around R490, or R8 a watt, compared to imported panels entering local soil at R35 to R40 a watt, he notes." What net effect of a 400% to 500% reduction in cost-per-watt for solar cells? Can you say US$1,307 / kw? At that price, even with another $500/kw for inverters and $250 installation (the main layer of the new panesl is a top layer of glass substrate which the professor states is the most expensive layer in the entire cell), it will turn the energy industry on it's head.

Already 4 x 25 MW plants scheduled for construction.

And Don, feel free to subsidize your H2 from natural gas, but just not with my taxes. 9<)