Self Fulfilling Prophecies

 I fully admit to being an energy wonk and this week I have been engaged in an intensely wonkish activity, reading government energy reports from the Energy Information Administration, which is about as wonky a bureaucracy as you could ever hope to find.  The EIA is the division of the federal Department of Energy that is responsible for tracking, reporting and forecasting energy use within the U.S.  I have been perusing the latest EIA forecasts for energy through the year 2040, in other words a 27 year forecast.  The experience has actually gotten me a bit riled up, which is probably surpising, given how truly dull the data is.

What's bothering me is that the EIA forecasts appear so completely out of touch with what is going on in the energy world today, especially renewable energy.  The EIA Annual Energy Outlook for 2013 forecasts a world in which they basic energy mix of the United States remains relatively unchanged for nearly 30 years, a rather depressing future that only oil companies could love!

 

For example, according to the EIA forecast by the year 2040 the United States will be using less coal to generate electricity than it does today(42%) which is a good thing.  However, it projects that way out in 2040 we will still be getting 35% of  our electricity from burning coal.  My initial reaction to this was, "What, you think we are all suicidal?"  I mean think about it, 27 more years of spewing coal into the atmosphere! 27 more years of poisoning the land with strip mining and coal ash.  By that point global warming would be so bad we could go sunbathing in the arctic!  Seriously, how could the EIA presume that in 27 years, with renewables getting cheaper every year, that we would continue to use coal to generate the bulk of our electricity? I wonder what the EPA thinks of this type of forecast!  The EPA has recently cracked down on the types of emissions new coal plants can produce and appears ready to put out equally strict emissions standards for existing coal plants.  Wouldn't it be far more logical to presume that these EPA regulations will significantly reduce the use of coal for generating electricity?

The problem with this recent IEA forecast is not only that it flies in the face of environmental reality, it flies in the face of economic reality.  The cost of using coal to generate electricity is already more than using either natural gas or renewable energy, even more so if you count the cost of the damage that coal does to our environment and health.  Moreover, all the data suggests that coal reserves are progressively getting more expensive to mine, not less. The EPA emissions regulations will probably also drive up costs for those plants that might try to reduce their emissions, rather than shutting down.  Given these increased costs why would we presume that the U.S. will continue to use a more expensive energy source for the next 27!

A Poor Track Record

The EIA doesn't have a particularly good track record when it comes to forecasting.  It completely missed the change in oil demand brought on by the growth of countries like India and China.  It also missed just how expensive oil would become given increasing global demand.  So in that sense I shouldn't be surprised that they seem to be missing the forecasts once again.  What bothers me the most about these reports is the ways in which they seem to dismiss renewable energy without any real justification.

For example, the report uses as a premise that federal tax credits for renewables will expire in 2016 and will never be renewed.  Huh?  On what basis does the EIA make this assumption?  Support for energy tax credits has been growing and attempts to kill them, such as when some members of Congress recently tried to make Wind tax credits part of the sequester, got completely rejected because the Republican congressmen from the plains states know just how fantastic renewables have been for their economy.  Why therefore should we presume that tax credits will expire and never be seen for the next 25 years?

Similarly, the report seems to totally discount the effect that state level Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) could have on renewable energy expansion.  The report says "...they have been relatively quiet in terms of state program expansions."  Again, I gotta say "Huh?"   State level RPS programs have been going gangbusters for the last decade and several states such as California and Colorado have even increased their renewable energy targets given how successful they have proven to be so far. And people are starting to notice that the states with RPS programs are having the greatest overall economic success.  Therefore why would we make energy forecasts assuming that all of the states will suddenly abandon their RPS programs?

Self Fulfilling Prophecies

OK, I realize many of you are probably thinking, so what if EIA got the forecasts wrong.  Prognosticators always get things wrong.  True!  However, it is also true that forecasts and predictions can quickly become self-fulfilling prophecies.  That is true not only in the negative sense but in the positive sense as well.  Predict good things will happen and more often than not they do.  Heck, this is part of the reason why Renewable Portfolio Standards work so well.  We presume a specific target for reducing our fossil fuel dependence, and sure enough the regulations and other efforts needed to make it happen, do happen. 

This is why we need to keep on the EIA about getting these forecasts right.  If they are going to project a dim, never ending fossil-fuel future they should be pushed to justify it, less we all become caught up in a future that we don't want to live in!



 

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Energy Saving Tips for the Frugal Homeowner

Editor's Note:  This article is a guest post from consumer advocate Michele Duchet.  Michele writes frequently on money and consumer issues. He has written this article on behalf of Texaselectricityproviders.com.

Many people dread the time of the month that their power bill arrives. The power company always seems to charge too much for too little. Usually, people respond by turning off the air conditioner or the heater. They don’t often realize that it’s easy to cut down on your power bills without cutting down on your comfort. Often, lopping a huge chunk of your utility bills requires nothing more than to be alert to possible sources of waste.

Finding a cheaper source of energy

One of the first things that you can do to save on your energy bills is to find out if you live in a state where you get to choose whom you buy your electricity from. Starting back in 1977 many states began to restructure their energy infrastructure in order to allow consumers a better choice of electricity and natural gas providers.  Currently 17 states allow consumers some choice of energy providers.  If you are not sure if your state provides options you can usually find out by contacting the state level energy department.  Also, many alternative energy providers provide online maps which can show you which parts of a state they serve.  For example, in the Lone Star State, you can look up an alternative energy provider such as Ambit Energy and get a Texas coverage map for the cheapest utility and then painlessly switch power utility providers. Once you find the cheapest utility, it’s time to look indoors for more savings.

Being alert in the summer

• Awnings used to be very popular 50 or 60 years ago – even on high-rise apartment complexes. These days, with air conditioning easily available, awnings go out of style. If you live in a warm place like Texas, you could easily cut down air conditioning power consumption in rooms that face the sun a large part of the day by shading every window with an awning. If you don’t like awnings, shutters can be a good idea, too (you should probably stay away from using blinds on your windows – they are a dust magnet and tend to be a maintenance nightmare)
• Green roofs are not a modern invention. People have been covering their roofs in vegetation for centuries – even sloped roofs. If the roofing on your house can support edge-to-edge the roof vegetation, you could get a great-looking roof, help the environment and significantly improve the energy efficiency of your home. Since leaves always have water evaporating out of them, the air around any vegetation remains cooler than the air in the surrounding environment. While you’re at it, you could look into covering your walls with vines and creepers, too. As long as you get the job professionally done, you shouldn’t have any trouble (poorly planned vine cover projects, for instance, attract plenty of rodents).
• If you live in an arid climate, you should consider getting an evaporative cooler instead of an air conditioner. It could save you $200 each year on your electricity bills.
• Finally, here is an unconventional idea –as far as possible, don’t cook indoors. If you can possibly manage it, consider building an outside summer kitchen in your backyard. You’ll keep a lot of your stove’s heat outside this way.  In fact, consider a solar oven as a way of cooking.  Solar cookers are inexpensive and easy to use.  You can find out more about them in our Solar Energy section.

Being careful when it’s winter

• Your first step is to insulate your house as well as you can. Even if you live in a rented house, you could consider spending your own money to get the attic insulated. Attic insulation is cheap enough that you could conceivably make your money back in energy savings. Finding every drafty door, window and switch plate and sealing any sources of air leakage is important, too.
• Your next step would be to get a quality Energy Star-rated programmable thermostat. You could easily save $100 on your heating bills with one of these.

Finally, winters are when the holidays come around. While all the festive lighting can be cheerful to look at, conventional lights can waste immense amounts of energy. Consider getting LED holiday lights for holiday cheer that is sensitive to both the environment and your wallet.

Dangerous Prophecies

 I fully admit to being an energy wonk and this week I have been engaged in an intensely wonkish activity, reading government energy reports from the Energy Information Administration, which is about as wonky a bureaucracy as you could ever hope to find.  The EIA is the division of the federal Department of Energy that is responsible for tracking, reporting and forecasting energy use within the U.S.  I have been perusing the latest EIA forecasts for energy through the year 2040, in other words a 27 year forecast.  The experience has actually gotten me a bit riled up, which is probably surpising, given how truly dull the data is.

What's bothering me is that the EIA forecasts appear so completely out of touch with what is going on in the energy world today, especially renewable energy.  The EIA Annual Energy Outlook for 2013 forecasts a world in which they basic energy mix of the United States remains relatively unchanged for nearly 30 years, a rather depressing future that only oil companies could love!

 

For example, according to the EIA forecast by the year 2040 the United States will be using less coal to generate electricity than it does today(42%) which is a good thing.  However, it projects that way out in 2040 we will still be getting 35% of  our electricity from burning coal.  My initial reaction to this was, "What, you think we are all suicidal?"  I mean think about it, 27 more years of spewing coal into the atmosphere! 27 more years of poisoning the land with strip mining and coal ash.  By that point global warming would be so bad we could go sunbathing in the arctic!  Seriously, how could the EIA presume that in 27 years, with renewables getting cheaper every year, that we would continue to use coal to generate the bulk of our electricity? I wonder what the EPA thinks of this type of forecast!  The EPA has recently cracked down on the types of emissions new coal plants can produce and appears ready to put out equally strict emissions standards for existing coal plants.  Wouldn't it be far more logical to presume that these EPA regulations will significantly reduce the use of coal for generating electricity?

The problem with this recent IEA forecast is not only that it flies in the face of environmental reality, it flies in the face of economic reality.  The cost of using coal to generate electricity is already more than using either natural gas or renewable energy, even more so if you count the cost of the damage that coal does to our environment and health.  Moreover, all the data suggests that coal reserves are progressively getting more expensive to mine, not less. The EPA emissions regulations will probably also drive up costs for those plants that might try to reduce their emissions, rather than shutting down.  Given these increased costs why would we presume that the U.S. will continue to use a more expensive energy source for the next 27!

A Poor Track Record

The EIA doesn't have a particularly good track record when it comes to forecasting.  It completely missed the change in oil demand brought on by the growth of countries like India and China.  It also missed just how expensive oil would become given increasing global demand.  So in that sense I shouldn't be surprised that they seem to be missing the forecasts once again.  What bothers me the most about these reports is the ways in which they seem to dismiss renewable energy without any real justification.

For example, the report uses as a premise that federal tax credits for renewables will expire in 2016 and will never be renewed.  Huh?  On what basis does the EIA make this assumption?  Support for energy tax credits has been growing and attempts to kill them, such as when some members of Congress recently tried to make Wind tax credits part of the sequester, got completely rejected because the Republican congressmen from the plains states know just how fantastic renewables have been for their economy.  Why therefore should we presume that tax credits will expire and never be seen for the next 25 years?

Similarly, the report seems to totally discount the effect that state level Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) could have on renewable energy expansion.  The report says "...they have been relatively quiet in terms of state program expansions."  Again, I gotta say "Huh?"   State level RPS programs have been going gangbusters for the last decade and several states such as California and Colorado have even increased their renewable energy targets given how successful they have proven to be so far. And people are starting to notice that the states with RPS programs are having the greatest overall economic success.  Therefore why would we make energy forecasts assuming that all of the states will suddenly abandon their RPS programs?

Self Fulfilling Prophecies

OK, I realize many of you are probably thinking, so what if EIA got the forecasts wrong.  Prognosticators always get things wrong.  True!  However, it is also true that forecasts and predictions can quickly become self-fulfilling prophecies.  That is true not only in the negative sense but in the positive sense as well.  Predict good things will happen and more often than not they do.  Heck, this is part of the reason why Renewable Portfolio Standards work so well.  We presume a specific target for reducing our fossil fuel dependence, and sure enough the regulations and other efforts needed to make it happen, do happen. 

This is why we need to keep on the EIA about getting these forecasts right.  If they are going to project a dim, never ending fossil-fuel future they should be pushed to justify it, less we all become caught up in a future that we don't want to live in!



 

. 

The New Battlefield in the Energy Wars

The somewhat geeky looking guy in this picture is Jonathan Small a registered lobbyist for the giant oil and gas conglomerate known as Koch Companies Public Sector LLC.  In other words he is a shill for the Koch brothers.  And in this picture (provided by Andy Marso of the Capital Journal) he is attending a public hearing of the House Energy and Environment Committee for the state of Kansas. 

It clearly an understatement to say that the Koch brothers and their compadres in the oil and gas industry are busy in the political arena and one of the places they have been most active has been in the state legislatures.  Why, you might ask?  Because that is where they can have the greatest influence in countering the rapidly growing strength of the Renewable Energy industry.  Despite their Red State leanings, renewable energy is just going plain gangbusters in the plain states like Kansas, and this scares the bajeeezus out of guys like the Koch brothers.

Kansas now ranks 3rd in the overall United States when it comes to wind energy, just behind California and Texas.  Kansas has lots of wind, and thanks to to an aggressive Renewable Energy target it set in 2009, it is making huge strides in reducing the state's dependency on coal and foreign oil.  The Wind industry in Kansas is now generating over $3 billion dollars in investments, has generated 13,000 jobs,  and is making lots of friends among farmers who have discovered that wind is an easy way to hugely increase their revenue without having any negative impact on their existing farming and ranching activities.  Wind energy is a total win-win for the people of Kansas but not for the oil companies so that is why the Koch brothers intend to put a stop to it. 

One of the ways the Koch brothers are going after renewable energy is to knock down the Renewable Energy Standards (RES) that have allowed Kansas to build such success. They sponsored two bills, one in the state House (HB 2241) and one in the state Senate (HB 82) before the Kansas legislature which were designed to water down the renewable energy standards.  The current Renewable Energy Standard says that the state utilities must get 15% of their energy from renewable sources by 2016 and 20% by 2020.  The state has been making great progress towards those laudable goals but the new bill being sponsored by the Koch brothers would extend the 15% benchmark by two years and eliminate the 20% benchmark all together.  Heaven forbid that a state should get 20% of its energy from non-polluting, non global warming resources!

Now For the Good News!

So before I go much further let me bring you the good news. Both bills in the Kansas state legislature were defeated, though by fairly narrow margins!  So the good guys one this round.  However, now is not a time to be overconfident!  A few more votes the other way and the progress Kansas has made would have been defeated.

The battle for our environment won't always be fought in big battles or standoffs in Congress with CNN and the other media hanging on every word.  Most of the real work for the environment gets done quietly at the state and local level and what is happening in Kansas is a perfect example of this.

One of the things I find fascinating about all of this is that the oil company manipulations are happening right out in the open.  Rep. Dennis Hedke, the Chairman of the Kansas House Energy and Environment Committee readily admits that he met with the Koch brothers lobbyist, Jonathan Small to "talk about the merits of the bill." To those who know Rep. Hedke such meetings should hardly be a surprise. When not doing his legislative gig Hedke is a contract geophysicist with a client list that includes 30 regional oil and gas  companies.  He has long been at the beck and call of the oil lobby and recently proposed a law requiring Kansas science teachers to teach students “evidence which both supports and counters” the science of climate change.  Given this level of scientific reasoning one can't help but wonder if a bill to have students debate the arguments for and against gravity is next!

The ugly reality is that state legislators are a whole lot easier and cheaper to buy than federal legislators so it is hardly surprising that the battle for the environment is being fought hard on the state front.  If we are going to solve global warming and protect our survival as a species, it is up to citizens to be diligent, not only in following federal environmental politics, but state politics as well!

Good News for the Bad News Weary

This has been one of those weeks where the regular news has seemed overtly depressing.  In particular, the knee jerk right wing reaction to Obama's utterly sensible gun control recommendations had put me in a bit of funk.  It was the kind of primitive reaction that makes me wonder if going with homosapiens as opposed to neanderthals was a particularly good idea.  So instead of just looking at the blamestream news I turned my attention to the many Energy News streams that I subscribe to.  What a pleasant change!

In looking at the Energy News stories nearly every one was brimming with positive solutions and even more positive progress.  One of the stories had to do with the progress the province of Ontario has made in eliminating coal-burning electric plants and, along with it, most of its air pollution.  Ontario's  Premier Dalton McGuinty last week announced that by the end of this year the last two large-scale coal-fired generating plants will close, leaving only a small backup facility in Thunder Bay operating until the end of 2014. The elimination of these coal-plants is the result of a ten year plan introduced back in 2003. 

A significant part of Ontario's energy progress has been because of the dramatic increase in the use of wind energy in the region.  Renewable energy has allowed this transition to occur while significantly reducing the region's carbon footprint. Tim Weis  of the Pembina Institute said that greenhouse-gas emissions from Ontario's electricity sector have fallen from 40 million tons to 10 million ton in the last decade.

At EB we are huge fans of the wonderful progress the U.S. military has made in implementing renewable energy.  This week that progress continued when the U.S. Army dedicated its largest solar photovoltaic system yet, located at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The installation will generate approximately 10 GWh of electricity annually and provide an estimated annual savings of $930,000. The array will supply approximately 10% of the total power used at the site. The system is also the world's largest low-concentration photovoltaic solar power plant ever implemented.


Finally this week, a group of prominent U.S. investors, including Google, announced that it is moving forward with the construction of an ambitious $5 billion undersea transmission line that will connect future offshore wind farms along the mid-Atlantic coast.  As we have often mentioned at EB, one of the primary factors limiting the deployment of renewable energy projects is the lack of electricity transmission resources.  This project is tackling one of the biggest, a complete lack of transmission resources for off-shore wind farms on the east coast of the United States. 

The first segment of the project, which will occur in three phases, includes construction of a 189-mile transmission cable along the New Jersey coast. Coordinators of the project, known as the Atlantic Wind Connection, say the cable would deliver more than 3,400 megawatts of electric capacity from future offshore wind projects to three locations in New Jersey. Construction is expected to begin in 2016, according to the sponsors. The project intends to eventually link offshore wind farms with electricity grids from Virginia to New York.

Go Google go!