Tag Archives: environment

Electricity.

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Electricity went from being a cute pet trick in the 18th Century to being the vital energy of the later 19th and 20th Centuries.  Electricity could power factory machinery in a far more flexible and efficient fashion than could steam-engines.  Electricity came to play a direct part in the transformation process itself (steel, aluminum).  Electricity could light cities and homes, and made possible telegraphs and telephones.  Demand soared as more and more applications were created.  Think about air conditioners, vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens, televisions.  The 1950s and 1960s coincided with the growth of electricity consumption.  Moreover, electricity became a politically-contested industry.  It ended up being highly regulated.[1] 

Then, about 2000, electricity generation plateaued.  Electricity-consuming goods became more efficient; population growth slowed, and no new major consumers of electricity were created.  Electricity consumption slowed to a crawl, rising only about 1 percent per year. 

One effect of the plateauing is that electrical generators and transmitters cut back on physical plant and human capital, while shifting their energies into new ventures. 

The electricity itself came from one of two sources.  Some of it came from hydropower (damming rivers).  First and foremost, it came from generators that burned carbon (wood, coal, oil, gasoline, natural gas).  So electricity was “clean” at its end-point, but very “dirty” at its point of origin.  So what?  So environmental concerns grew increasingly powerful.  No one quarreled much with the end-stage electricity.  The creation-phase (generation) electricity caused great concern.  Burning lots of carbon released greenhouse gases and promoted global warming. 

The pursuit of efficiency has slowed, even stalled, the growth of carbon burning in many areas.  The consumption of gasoline, jet fuel, and heating oil have all stopped rising since about 2000.  No, it hasn’t made it go away. It’s just that the damage inflicted has been limited.   

Now we seem on the cusp of a new expansion of electricity consumption.  Things like data centers, new factories, and the response to global warming itself (electric cars, heat pumps) promise to push up the demand for electricity.  The environmental concerns are increasingly pressing as a long-term concern. 

What are the requirements of and constraints on non-carbon electricity generation?  Non-carbon electricity generation means solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear power.  Generation, transmission, distribution, and storage all cost a lot of money and pose technical problems. 

The shift of the industry toward stability twenty years ago now impedes rapid expansion.  Even building capacity.  Things might go a different way.  Then, the extensive regulations and shortage of workers also limits rapid expansion.  A utility that has bet big on renewable energy faces a fight year wait before it can connect to the electrical power grid.  A company can go bankrupt during the wait. 

It seems unreasonable to suppose that outmoded political and social beliefs can hold back science and technology for very long.  It also seems unreasonable to believe that lots of regulation can go hand in hand with lots of innovation. 

[1] Greg Ip, “Electricity, Not Oil, Is Growth’s Engine,” WSJ, 28 March 2025. 

Climate of Fear XXI.

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Used to be, presidential candidates could just say “I stand for the principles of the Whig Party” and let it go at that.[1]  Now, a presidential election campaign requires candidates to lay out their plans for examination by voters.[2]

Hillary Clinton has begun to do so.  One key area is climate change.  Here she seeks to reach beyond the goals set by the Obama administration.  President Obama believed that emissions had to be reduced, so he ordered the EPA to use the Clean Air Act to issue regulations that would compel vehicles and power plants to cut emissions by 25-28 percent below the 2005 level by 2025, and by 80 percent by 2050.

According to many economists, a carbon tax would be highly effective in reducing emissions.  Indeed, the goals for 2050 and perhaps even those for 2025 can’t be reached without a carbon tax.  It would drive up the price of carbon fuels above the price of alternative fuels, creating a market demand for those alternative fuels.  This, in turn, would shift the terms for solar and wind energy while stimulating a demand for mass transportation.

However, it would hit hard on ordinary consumers by raising gas and electricity prices.  So, Ford F-150s, “Mommy vans,” and air conditioning would all become prohibitively expensive.[3]  Such voters would become angry, angry hippos and—in an act of false consciousness[4]—vote Republican.  Clinton has rigorously avoided proposing a carbon tax.

Conceding that the Democrats are unlikely to win control of both houses of Congress (perhaps not even one), she envisions acting on climate change without legislation.  Clinton believes that “meeting the climate challenge is too important to wait for climate deniers in Congress to pass comprehensive climate legislation.”[5]  She would use the Clean Air Act to issue regulations that would reduce emissions by airlines, oil refineries, gas wells, and cement plants.

What might such action accomplish?  She hopes to raise the number of solar panels from about 70,000 today to 500 million by 2020.  She wants to spend $60 billion on mass-transit and energy-efficient buildings.  Experts believe that the Obama Administration already has done just about everything that administrative regulations can achieve, even if the courts allow all of them to remain in effect.  Taken all together, her energy proposals will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent of the 2005 level by 2050.  That is, the same mark as that set by the Obama administration.  Furthermore, a Clinton administration would need to get at least $60 billion in appropriations through Congress.  This seems equally unlikely to be achieved.

Nevertheless, Clinton has won some support from the environmental community, which sees the danger of climate change as more pressing than any other danger.  “We know that [a carbon tax] is not politically realistic.  And we need to be realistic about what we can get,” said Scott Hennessey, vice president of the solar power company SolarCity.[6]

The real issue is the American unwillingness to be taxed, rather than “climate deniers.”

[1] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAjwAuHHQJs

[2] Voters in long-established democracies realize that their own candidates are just writing a wish list, but they believe that the other candidate means to try for integral fulfillment of his/her agenda.

[3] Actually, they already are in environmental terms.  It’s just that on one wants to tell people the truth.

[4] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness

[5] Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, quoted in Coral Davenport, “Clinton’s Climate Change Plan Avoids Mention of a Carbon Tax,” NYT, 3 July 2016.

[6] Which spent a measly $200,000 on the Podesta Group lobbying firm in 2015.  See: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmsum.php?id=D000022193&year=2014%20Campaign%20Contributions  This was not mentioned in the NYT article.  See n. 5 above.