Green Energy Enabler
Last night, one of the least remarkable passages of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s speech was this one:
I ran for President to renew the promise of America…. To promote a clean energy economy that will create millions of green collar jobs.
This is one idea almost everyone running for office can rally around. It combines three extremely appealing concepts: Energy independence, alleviating global warming and the prospect of “millions” of good-paying jobs that don’t exist now.
Anyone who has worked in energy knows, however, that if it was easy to provide the amount and quality of energy the world is accustomed to without having to pollute the planet or transfer wealth to the Middle East, we would have it now. Reality checks aren’t hard to find. For example, this story from today’s New York Times:
While the United States today gets barely 1 percent of its electricity from wind turbines, many experts are starting to think that figure could hit 20 percent.
Achieving that would require moving large amounts of power over long distances, from the windy, lightly populated plains in the middle of the country to the coasts where many people live. Builders are also contemplating immense solar-power stations in the nation’s deserts that would pose the same transmission problems.
The grid’s limitations are putting a damper on such projects already. Gabriel Alonso, chief development officer of Horizon Wind Energy, the company that operates Maple Ridge, said that in parts of Wyoming, a turbine could make 50 percent more electricity than the identical model built in New York or Texas.
“The windiest sites have not been built, because there is no way to move that electricity from there to the load centers,” he said.
The basic problem is that many transmission lines, and the connections between them, are simply too small for the amount of power companies would like to squeeze through them. The difficulty is most acute for long-distance transmission, but shows up at times even over distances of a few hundred miles.
It sounds easy to fix: Just build more transmission lines with larger capacity. That’s not a major technological challenge.
However, it is a major business and political challenge. As the Times points out, hundreds of companies own pieces of the grid, or the rights-of-way needed for them. Running a chain of electric transmission towers from wind/solar resources means crossing through both private property and public nature preserves, affecting sensitive ecosystems as well as sensitive homeowners who don’t welcome their unsightly presence. Hence:
In a 2005 energy law, Congress gave the Energy Department the authority to step in to approve transmission if states refused to act. The department designated two areas, one in the Middle Atlantic States and one in the Southwest, as national priorities where it might do so; 14 United States senators then signed a letter saying the department was being too aggressive.
Energy Department leaders say that, however understandable the local concerns, they are getting in the way. “Modernizing the electric infrastructure is an urgent national problem, and one we all share,” said Kevin M. Kolevar, assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability, in a speech last year.
This is a problem, the Times says, that “politicians in Washington have long known about.” But it harshes the clean-energy buzz to discuss it much. Plus, it might disturb those 14 senators, who probably want to be seen during these two weeks as anything but enemies of the environment. It would be refreshing to hear candidates talk about the obstacles to energy independence and global warming alleviation, and how they plan to address them. Someday soon, they’ll have no choice.
