The Pragmatic Environmentalist

Clean coal fired energy. I don’t know if there is a truer oxymoron than clean coal energy. There are several technological proposals to clean up coal, but most of the technologies are unproven, work on a small scale and only remove a fraction of the carbon dioxide from a coal power plant’s exhaust. These drawing board technologies are incredibly expensive and cost around $100 million per power plant.

I laud the green weenie push to reduce green house gases. I want to live in a world where the air and water is clean. I like to swim in lakes and smell the fresh breeze. I also enjoy my air conditioning when its allergy season, fresh food in the refrigerator and the house lights in the dark of winter.

The demand for electricity is increasing and outpacing our generation capability. Wind generated power is great for some parts of the country where the winds blows all of the time like Colorado and Wyoming. Ranchers in Cheyenne, WY are making money hand over fist by leasing their land to windmill power companies. These ranchers are pragmatic people and don’t really care that the windmills dot the surrounding landscape. I wouldn’t care either if I was pulling in a quarter million dollars a year in lease income.

Not everyone feels the same way. The people of Vermont shot down a wind energy project in the Green Mountains because they did not want the pristine view of the mountains to include a string of windmills. The same private views also plague wind efforts off the coast of New Jersey and Cape Cod. In these cases, offshore windmill projects are half inch stick figure images on the far visual horizon. Fortunately, a federal judge ruled that Cape Wind can proceed with their windmill project. Great, because the wind howls offshore in the Northeast all winter long. I’m glad that there are some pragmatic judges out there.

Solar power is not the answer either. A cutting edge solar power plant is under construction in southern California on a ten square mile site. This plant occupies more space than a traditional power plant by a factor of one hundred and produces less than 25% of the power of a coal power plant. And it only works when the sun is out, which for the southwest is over 300 days a year. What about those two months when there is cloud cover? Solar power technology has a way to go before it can economically produce energy.

So what are the remaining options?

Power companies are trying to build more coal power plants despite extreme opposition from local and national environmental groups. So far, only two additional plants are going forward. So what do we do when electrical demand outstrips supply? Roving blackouts? Remember when California suffered rolling blackouts in the heat of the summer? Can you live without electrical power for a few hours in the middle of the day? Think about it.

What about nuclear energy? Environmentalists also block the power companies from building nuclear power plants because, you know, nuclear waste is bad stuff. Nuclear power is one of the cleanest power sources. Who knows, there may be technology in the near future that can reuse spent nuclear fuel.

I completely agree that we need to find cleaner energy sources. I also don’t want to sit in the dark when I’m home at night. I like candle light, but it does get tiresome to live by candle light and candles are expensive. Maybe I need to invest in candle futures. We need energy solutions now and we need a plan to get us to a cleaner future without bankrupting us now. I just hope the idealistic green weenies don’t paint us into a corner with no way out.

Who’s up for the pragmatic approach?