A Brief History…

This post on ChicagoBoyz points out that the political left, including Obama, has no intention of investing in energy infrastructure. The post notes this NY Times editorial piece which exposes the left’s antipathy to transmission infrastructure. Here is the agenda as seen from the left:

PRESIDENT Obama has laid out an ambitious agenda for dealing with our energy needs and climate change: he proposes to double the supply of renewable energy within three years, establish a cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions and use federal stimulus dollars to help homes, businesses and governments use energy more efficiently. This is the right blueprint for increasing the number of green jobs, encouraging economic growth, ensuring that the United States has the energy it needs at reasonable prices, and reducing the risk of global climate change.

Aside from “renewable energy” which constitutes 3% of US energy production with a practical cap of 10% of need by 2020, let alone three years, there are no plans to produce more energy.

lawmakers should resist calls to add an extensive and costly new transmission system that would carry electricity from remote areas like Texas, the Great Plains and Eastern Canada to places with high energy demands like Boston, Chicago and New York. This idea is being promoted by energy companies and by elected officials who see it as an economic development opportunity for their particular state or region. Long-distance transmission lines are needed, they argue, to ensure that the president’s energy goals are met.

We have already eliminated windmills near Cape Cod because they offend Ted Kennedy. Does anyone think New York City is to be covered with solar panels ? The only possibility for wind power and solar power is to generate it in places where it is possible, then transmit it to the places where it is needed.

In Massachusetts, we get about 5 percent of our power from hydroelectric plants in Quebec. Our distribution utilities are negotiating to install a second transmission line for Canadian hydropower, which would be paid for through long-term power-purchase contracts approved by the New England states whose residents use that power. Developers of remote wind-power farms in eastern Canada have said they would also like to sell us electricity, but unless the combined cost of the power they could provide and its transmission is competitive with our other renewable energy choices, their projects won’t get approved. That’s the way it should be.

The real agenda of the political and environmental left is to reduce power usage, no matter what the consequences. Cap and Trade will certainly do that. Now all we have to do is find work for all those laid off by factories leaving the environmentally sensitive states. The real story is here:

the US has failed to invest in generation and transmission assets over the last 25 years or so. “Base load” generation primarily consists of 1) coal plants (no one is building new ones because of environmental legislation) 2) hydroelectric plants (no one is damming rivers due to the Sierra Club) 3) nuclear plant (they are far too expensive, regulation is uncertain, and Three Mile Island hasn’t gone away). There have been some “peaker” plants running natural gas (more expensive) and some minor “renewable” projects but generally we have just been “running in place” with regards to capacity and utilizing up all the “reserve” capacity that had been built up in previous years, as evidenced by blackouts in places like California.

The future with Obama, Reid and Pelosi is grim.

Here is an upbeat appraisal of Obama’s plans but note very little about building new transmission lines.

Tags: energy, Obama, Pelosi, Reid

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 11:51 am and is filed under energy, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.