CHURCHVILLE, VA—President Obama has allocated $4 billion in “stimulus funds” to help advance the “smart grid,” which is intended to seamlessly integrate all our new solar and wind power into the national supply of electricity. Much of the $4 billion will be spent to install 20 million new digital “smart meters.” These meters will instantly tell the power company how to deploy its varied generating sources most effectively.

The “stimulus fund” goal is to create new “green” jobs. The Washington Post estimates that deploying the 20 million smart meters will create jobs for about 1,600 installers, and keep them employed for about five years. The manufacturing process for the meters will be highly automated, so only a few hundred jobs would be involved there. Still, 2,000 green jobs for five years, paid for by stimulus funds, must be good. Or is it?

Let’s think this through.  The smart meters report automatically to the power company. We’ll lose 28,000 existing, permanent jobs for meter-readers. The Washington Post says all our “green” energy efforts are likely to produce only tens of thousands of jobs, not the millions of jobs needed to keep America at full employment.

A good Spanish study, led by Dr. Gabriel Calzada of Juan Carlos University in Madrid, found that every renewable-energy job created by the Spanish government has destroyed 2.2 other energy-related jobs. Worse, every megawatt of expensive “green energy” has destroyed 5.39 jobs in non-energy sectors as products became too expensive for consumers to buy—or as manufacturing shifted to countries without energy taxes. President Obama has held Spain up as a country for us to emulate, which only emphasizes that Calzada’s study is likely an Obama-valid blueprint for our own energy future.  

Note, by the way, that China has already become the world’s major source of wind turbines, cutting further into Obama’s “green job” expectations. The wind turbine manufacturing will shortly be joined by our steel and aluminum industries, fertilizer plants and many other production facilities when the U.S. energy penalty taxes mount up.

Unfortunately, the $4 billion doesn’t replace our massive existing investments in coal-fired and gas-fired power plants, in gasoline refineries and service stations, in natural gas pipelines and drilling rigs. In reality, the renewables will subtract from our standard of living.

In 2007, U.S. subsidies to coal-fired electricity were 44 cents per megawatt hour, compared with $23.37 in subsidies for wind turbine megawatts, and $24.34 in subsidies per solar megawatt. That’s a fair measure of the added cost for renewables, except that wind and solar megawatts must also be billed for the additional costs of the fossil fueled plants that must be built and kept in “spinning reserve” in case the wind drops or clouds cover the sun. Denmark, a world leader in wind, has not decommissioned any fossil-power generators because of its “spinning reserve” requirement.

As Obama’s energy taxes force reductions in coal and oil production, the price of U.S. energy will double and triple—and so will the costs of the things we buy. Clearly, if the President wasn’t afraid of man-made global warming, we would not have spent the $4 billion on the “smart grid” at this moment of recession. Nor would we be planning massive and ineffective wind farms.

We might, instead, be designing new coal-fired power plants with the Department of Energy’s latest discoveries in clean-burn technology.

DENNIS T. AVERY is a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He is an environmental economist and was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421 or email to cgfi@hughes.net

 

Source: Gabriel Calzada; “Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources,” Juan Carlos University, Madrid; March, 2009.

CHURCHVILLE, VA—As I write, a strong wind is blowing across the Alleghany Mountains onto my house. It’s bringing an “Arctic Clipper” that will drop my temperatures this weekend to a frigid and unusual 6 degrees F. Why can’t I get some good from this chill wind—with a wind turbine to harvest the “free” energy?

 

Out in Oregon, General Electric has just announced a big wind project: 338 turbines, rated at 845 MW. GE claims it will power for 235,000 homes, and is applying for the appropriate federal subsidies.

 

Will the wind turbines power 235,000 homes?  Don’t bet on it. My friend Donald Hertzmark—an energy economist—warns the power deliveries from this wind project are likely to average only 25 percent of its rated capacity. That would serve only 58,000 homes, not 235,000.

 

But Hertzmark says even this is too high because the wind is highly variable. The Texas power grid’s experience is to rely on no more than 9 percent of the wind farm’s rated capacity. That would reduce GE’s real subsidy claim to about 21,000 households.

 

It gets worse.

 

Most of Oregon’s power comes from dams, and the lean period for hydropower is winter. That’s when heating demand peaks—but also when the dams have to restrict their water flow to protect fish, control flooding, and save up irrigation water for the next summer.

 

How likely is it that wind turbines can add to Oregon’s generating capacity in the midst of the winter electricity demand surge, and offset the hydroelectric generating restrictions?  Not very, says Hertzmark.

 

This January, Britain’s wind turbines (6 percent of total generating capacity after many billions of dollars invested) supplied virtually no power on most days. The wind tends not to blow when and where it’s already very cold.

 

The stars of the British winter power demand were natural gas turbines, which are 34 percent of capacity and supplied 40 percent of the power during the winter wind lull. But Britain’s North Sea natural gas is running out; the only likely new source would be natural gas piped from Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Ouch.

 

“Wind cannot be relied upon to provide firm generation at full capacity coincident with peak demand.” warns Hertzmark. “Wind might be capable of contributing to the peak demand requirements at some times. However, this will rarely happen—and when it does, it will be for brief periods. For significant periods of time, no households will be served by the wind farms.”

 

Nor have either of the worlds “wind leaders”—Denmark and Germany—decommissioned any fossil fuel plants. The fossil generators are kept in “spinning reserve”—burning fossil fuels—to keep the lights on in the schools, factories, and hospitals when the wind dies.

 

Why build wind turbines at all?  Well, wind and solar were the only energy sources the Greens would endorse, probably because they’re so expensive and erratic that there’s no danger of anybody getting hooked on cheap power again. Denmark was also selling wind turbines to other countries, so they had to be demonstrated at home. Now China is making cheaper turbines. Who will buy?

 

The cost of the “free wind”? Projections are about 17 cents per kwh—far higher than other energy sources.  One of my neighbors has just invested $100,000 in a wind turbine. I think he’s wasted his money—and some of yours.

 

DENNIS T. AVERY is an environmental economist, and a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC.  He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421 or email to cgfi@hughes.net