Mark Udall Loves Solar, But Why?

If Mark Udall gets beat in November, he will be looking for a high paying job. Peter Blake describes his prospects in a round about way in the Rocky Mountain News today.

It is enough to make anyone who thinks about it sick.

We sent an email to Peter Blake to try to determine if the figures he was using for kilowatt hour prices for wind and solar production were the heavily subsidized prices or the true prices. He didn't know:

A spokesman for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory said power from photovoltaic panels cost on average 22 cents to 25 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to 4 cents to 6 cents for wind power. But the law must be served, and it specifies that all Xcel customers, not just solar users, must pay extra so that Xcel doesn't lose any money.

Renewable Mandate Dead?

This past August, Mark Udall tried to stuff a 20% renewable mandate down the throats of every state in the union with an amendment to the "no new energy" bill. His amendment was modified to 15%, but even that appears to be too much:

Last Thursday, Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid said that they would jettison the renewable energy provisions in both the House and Senate versions of the 2007 energy bill in the interest of passing a bill before the Thanksgiving recess begins on November 17.

The Democrats have a problem. They are already being tagged as a do-nothing congress, and the energy bill is being tagged as the "no new energy" bill. They have to get something through the congress, and a bill without the controversial renewable mandate would be much easier to swallow.

Mark Udall and his environmentalist allies are using the global warming scare / scam to force taxpayers and utilities rate payers to invest in uneconomic power sources that can't be sustained without mandates:

While the Renewable Electricity Standard would be a new federal program (31 states already have some kind of renewable mandate), the tax incentives for solar and wind would continue programs already in place. Losing these tax breaks would be devastating to the renewable energy industry, said solar lobbyist Scott Sklar of the Stella Group: "It will cause sales and investment to implode."

Energy Bill In Danger

The US Senate is refusing to rubber stamp Mark Udall's personal hobby horse, a 20% renewable mandate by 2020. Actually, the House couldn't stomach the requirement and cut it to 15% in committee.

Now, a Utah paper is reporting that even the 15% mandate is in jeopardy.

In August, the House passed energy measures that included the requirement that investor-owned utilities get at least 15 percent of their power from renewable sources and energy efficiency by 2020. Udall said the proposal failed in the Senate after heavy lobbying by utilities in the South.

"The Southern states think they don't have enough wind and sun and geothermal to meet the renewable energy standard," Udall said, "but many, many experts believe that's not the case."

Mark Udall needs to spend some time in the south. They don't get the kinds of windstorms that are common on the great plains. They have no geothermal features. While the sun does shine, solar power is the most expensive of the potential renewables.

Our bet is that if Mark Udall were a southern congressman, he would be fighting this mandate tooth and nail, too.

It would be useful if Udall named a few of the "many, many experts" he claims believe that the Southern states can produce enough renewables to meet his mandate.

A Nobel Prize "Co-Winner" Speaks Out

Best Destiny has an excellent essay on John R Christy, and we suggest readers who are not mind numbed by environmentalist propaganda read it. Of course, Mark Udall, who many think believes he is a high priest of environmentalism and thus is entitled to his own facts will want to skip both the Best Destiny and the Christy WSJ article, "My Nobel Moment." Christy writes:

I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time...

Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us. As my high-school physics teacher admonished us in those we-shall-conquer-the-world-with-a-slide-rule days, "Begin all of your scientific pronouncements with 'At our present level of ignorance, we think we know . . .'"

We recently wrote about the high relative costs of wind power, but Rossputin put our essay to shame when he published an item which illuminates the costs of ethanol. We are spending $128 Billion to avoid importing 2.3 billion in oil.

Christy notes:

My experience as a missionary teacher in Africa opened my eyes to this simple fact: Without access to energy, life is brutal and short. The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today. Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit "global warming."

The Real Cost of Wind Farms

Today, the Denver Post published an editorial celebrating the wind and solar power initiatives in Colorado. In the process, they appear to have let the cat out of the bag on the costs of these enterprises.

This author left a simple math comment at the bottom of that editorial questioning the Post's math. The Post claimed that it cost $166 thousand per megawatt to build a wind power plant in Weld County. The author misplaced a decimal, meaning that the cost was actually $1.6 million.

Worse, the wind only blows about 30% of the time, meaning that they built a 90 megawatt (less simple and more accurate math) equivalent power plant for $500 million. That works out to $5.5 million per megawatt in construction costs.

A conventional coal plant, again according the the Denver Post, costs $250,000 per megawatt to build. That is less than 1/20th of the price of this wind farm.

Consider that the Colorado legislature has just mandated that by 2020 20% of utility power must come from "renewables." How many $500 million plants that only intermittently produce power will it take to meet that goal? Many more than Colorado can afford.

Mark Udall tried and failed to impose that same goal on the whole nation this summer. He was voted down. At some point, taxpayers and ratepayers will start doing the math and realize that Mark Udall and his band of merry environmentalist extremists are much like Hillary Clinton, but with less honesty. At least she admits that she has more ideas than the country can afford.

Energy Questions for Mark Udall

The left is already complaining that Udall is working with Musgrave. They hope to beat her in 2008 and think Udall's cooperation doesn't help their cause. The two recently held a joint forum that will doubtless stir comments in the left wing blogosphere. Even so, the subject was of more interest than the format.

We have energy questions for Mark Udall:

If the lack of water resources is a serious problem in Colorado, and it is, why are we providing incentives to grow a crop that will gulp water when it is turned into biofuel? Do you plan to ship the corn to another state with more water and ship the fuel back? Has anyone really thought this one through?

Wind farms in Colorado are a great idea! Have you talked to Ted Kennedy about why he hates the thought of wind farms outside Martha's Vinyard? Better yet, sponsor a bill that provides Federal funds and a mandate for farms in both places and see how many of your environmentalist left friends in Congress vote for it.

Wouldn't Colorado provide more energy independence by developing gas wells on 350 acres of the Roan Plateau at a time?